Do dashes in your domain hurt your SERP ?

[Jelly]

Hi

I have a 3 word domain with dashes between them as so: my-domain-name . com
will search engines consider this spammy? will it hurt my SERP ?

I don't intend to tell anyone this domain over phone, nore do I even intend for someone to type this domain in their address bar.
I don't really care if anyone remembers this domain or not, it's not a name of company or brand or whatever, and I already own mydomainname . com and have other plans for it.
I also don't care about the domain's value as I will never sell it.

I searched and found threads about this from 2004 and 2006, maybe things have changed since then.

[Hafsoh]

Domain names with dashes do fine in the search engines however, the more the dashes the more spammy the domain name will look. Personally small and single dashed domains are okay.

[Tubby]

Hafsof said
"Domain names with dashes do fine in the search engines"

I Agree with Hafsoh.

[innominds]

If you don't find mydomainname.com then the next best option is my-domain-name.com
Just go with 2 dashes.

[nickoran]

If you don't find mydomainname.com then the next best option is my-domain-name.com
Just go with 2 dashes.

Yes I tend to agree, although there are usually so many alternatives available. Anyway, i just posted about the use of hyphens vs underscores here: http://www.webproworld.com/search-en...re-hyphen.html just thought you might find it usefull as underscores are an obvious alternativeyet this would suggest your best off with the hyphens your currently using.

[nichita2008]

I have one website with dashes (just two words). The site it has good rankings in SERPs. For me with or without dashes are the same thing. Just be careful to the length of website's name.

[Doc]

I think MC's answer was fairly clear, that dashes are preferable, but not mandatory. I think the biggest issue, if SERPS is a concern, is that you use my-domain.com, rather than mydomain.com, unless you are fairly certain that users searching for your site would be typing in "mydomain, without a space.

EDIT: When I say that MC said that dashes are preferable, I am referring to preferable to underscore, not that dashes are preferable to single word URLs.

[EliteAF]

Past experience says that it does not hurt, but it is different. 3 years ago, dashes worked better in Yahoo than Google, I do not know if that has changed.

[z28com]

I've been using dashes in my domains since 2003 with no problems.

[astro]

The hyphon is works fine for me with my main site.

Just a thought but these days what about .info?

It is a top level domain with little take up!

/Astro