How do search engines tease out words in URLs?

[xtempore]

I like breaking up words, but do Search Engine?

I like dashes in domain names, and in other parts of URLs, because for me it makes them more readable. But I'm not sure search engines feel the same way.

Here's a story...

In the early days Experts Exchange had the domain expertsexchange.com - obvious right?

Well, not so, said their hosting provider, who banned certain words in domains. In this case the domain name can read "Experts Exchange", but unfortunately it also reads "Expert Sex Change" - Ooops!

The host banned the name because it had the word "sex" in it, and the they went with experts-exchange.com.

Today, if you go and look for expertsexchange.com, it is nothing but a spam site. (A shame that the guys at Experts Exchange let that happen.)

Funnily enough, if you are looking for an "expert sex change" in Google - the top listing is the Wikipedia page on "Experts Exchange".

How do Search Engines do it?

So I wonder how the search engine know where to break the words. I guess they have to use content to clarify where there is ambiguity. Does anyone here know?

Perhaps you have some quote from Matt Cutts?

Oops!

There's lots of other oops domain names too (many now abandoned)...

Psychotherapist Kate Burns' website - kateburnstherapist.com (Kate burns the rapist?)
Spanish travel site - choosespain.com (Chooses pain?)
And the company Dickson - dicksonweb.com
Or Web One - webone.com.au

Do you know other "oops" domains?

[Canonical]

Having keywords in domain names adds a significant boost to a URL's ranking for a particular keyword phrase ONLY if the domain name is an EXACT match for the search phrase. So keyword1keyword2 ( dot ) com would get a significant boost if the user searched for "keyword1 keyword2" or "keyword1keyword2".

It doesn NOT provide a significant boost to rankings if the user searches for "keyword1 keyword3". The boost the URL would get from having only one of the two keywords from the search phrase in the domain is logically equivalent to having that same single keyword somewhere else in the URL like a folder name or page name... And keyword rich URLs are a minor ranking factor compared to other things link text from inbound links or the <title> element value for a page.

The confusion you're talking about only happens with exact match domains that can be parsed into multiple keyword combinations. The search engines have been dealing with domain, folder, and page names that do NOT contain word separators for over a decade, and do a great job IMO 99.999% of the time. I'm sure they can tell by the inbound link text for the home page in a lot of cases (even when it is one of the corner cases you describe) how to parse it into the correct keywords. It's really a non-issue when you consider the number of URLs or even domain names on the web and the tiny percentage of those that can be interpretted multiple ways.

[full house]

I read last 2 years that dash is better in breaking up words. I still use dash in breaking up domains.

[MayaLocke]

Hyphens are the best way to break up keywords in domains.

[Ace]

Its all depends on your Anchor Text if all your anchor text contain the words "Expert Sex Change" then search engine will show it like that only.