discuss Hyphens in domain name?

BaileyUK said:

I think it's difficult to place yourself in the cultural-set of other languages or Countries , and it's where a lot of foreign language mistakes are made in domain registrations. We should count ourselves lucky that we use good ol'english , or the American version of

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Or we Canadians who use a mix of both the UK English and American English (and French too!)

Our two daughters lived and worked in New York for several years (both met their husbands there, one Irish and the other Australian) I couldn't get over how every Yank thought I was Canadian because I didn't speak like the Queen

NYRE said:

Two words.... Radio. Test.

"...For all your business Internet needs, visit us at E... Hyphen... Hyphen... Commerce... Dot... Com"

(Of course, it goes without saying that the same principle applies to 'purely visual' mediums as well, in the context of memorability and retention ...i.e., flyers, coupons, billboards, business cards, tv commercials and late night infomercials, google results, and so on.)

In 2018, even brick-and-mortar small business owners and other lay people are savvy to the vital importance of branding (or, at the very least, are only a click away from a million pages of good advice on the web counseling them against bad branding ...of which "e -- -- c o m m e r c e . c o m" is a prime example).

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I would never name my business:
e--commerce.com
But if that name helped me rank first page serp, I would use it in a heart beat.

One hyphen is kinda ok but two next to each other is a deal breaker. Drop it like a hot potato!

DnEbook said:

One hyphen is kinda ok but two next to each other is a deal breaker. Drop it like a hot potato!

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Tell that to Huge Domains owners of auto--insurance.com

WE got a little off topic. I really don't want to know if or who likes hyphens in names. (not to be rude) I think there is a consensus that most don't like and/or wouldn't recommend them. (even me)
The question was though does anyone foresee double hyphen (--) domain names worth going up in the next 5-10 years? 10 years ago, or even less I would say that most people would have said single hyphen (-)
domain names were not going to be worth much if anything. So now they are selling regularly for ok $$.
Does anyone see auto--insurance selling for $1,700 at HD anytime soon?
Or any other -- domain name for 4-5 figures?

If it sells it has value, if it doesn't, it does not

E-Promote said:

If it sells it has value, if it doesn't, it does not

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Can't be more blunt then that.

Domains are business, business is blunt

urljunky said:

Tell that to Huge Domains owners of auto--insurance.com

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Wow you can't be that silly to think that because a domain is listed for sale it must be good. Some people gamble with domains and some people know what to register/buy. Only a novice/fool would buy a double hyphenated name to build a business around.

DnEbook said:

Wow you can't be that silly

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Appreciate your point, but yes most domain peeps can be that silly, and they usually are. Read between the lines.

E-Promote said:

Appreciate your point, but yes most domain peeps can be that silly, and they usually are. Read between the lines.

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The registrars love the domainers school of thought

DnEbook said:

Wow you can't be that silly to think that because a domain is listed for sale it must be good. Some people gamble with domains and some people know what to register/buy. Only a novice/fool would buy a double hyphenated name to build a business around.

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Who ever said they would build a business around a hyphenated domain? Who ever said HD is smart? They have bought thousands of junk domains and auto--insurance is one of them.
This discussion is about double hyphenated names having value in the future.
It's like domain names that had more than 1 keyword. then it went up to two. Now you are seeing short sentence domains sell. Single hyphen domains use not sale for squat, now they are selling for 5 figures.
So now I guess every ones answer is no they wouldn't build a business around a hyphenated domain,
but that wasn't the question.

"...what i am saying is if you have an affiliate site or just an online store and you can get first page serp using a hyphenated name, why wouldn't you?"

I think some would infer from your quoted statement above that "...building a business around a hyphenated domain" is precisely what you are proposing above. Perhaps that's the source of some confusion here.

That said, I'll be happy to settle the matter for you here and now. The answer is a resounding, unequivocal, "Hell No!" Double-hyphenated names will have no value in the future; nor do they have any presently. Period. Full stop. Single hyphenated dotcoms at the very highest echelons of the market -- e.g., Stock-Market.com, New-York.com, Injury-Lawyer.com, Home-Insurance.com, Crypto-Currency.com, and so on (...you get the idea) -- have *some* value, to *some* people, *some* of the time. (Full disclosure: I once sold "New-York-Real-Estate.com" for a very high 4-figure price, and will never again repeat that kind of success ...EVER! It was an outlier even then, and it is "other worldly" today

Hope this helps...

urljunky said:

Who ever said they would build a business around a hyphenated domain? Who ever said HD is smart? They have bought thousands of junk domains and auto--insurance is one of them.
This discussion is about double hyphenated names having value in the future.
It's like domain names that had more than 1 keyword. then it went up to two. Now you are seeing short sentence domains sell. Single hyphen domains use not sale for squat, now they are selling for 5 figures.
So now I guess every ones answer is no they wouldn't build a business around a hyphenated domain,
but that wasn't the question.

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You quoted huge domains were selling auto--insurance and you got a reply , as for the question there is no point stating the obvious, good luck

Sorry for the confusion.
To me having a lucrative website that brings in revenue and building a brand or business are two totally seperate things.
A business model you want to brand and gain recognition to one day branch out globally with either franchise's or corporate stores or bring people to your well known established brand to use to monetize their use of your platform.
A Traffic driven website used to monetize customer conversions. (ie. amazon site, shopify site) or a site you can generate your own traffic and don't need amazon to generate it for you, to me is not a brand or "business" in the sense of a brandable business. You have no employees, outsource everything and profit from the drop shipping or maybe even your own stock, but never hope of one day opening a brick and mortar. Some people have hundreds of these sites and profit from them daily and name them things like kidsbooksandstuffedanimals or Barneysleathergoodsandsupplies. Not brandable. But what if barney got leather--goods and started ranking higher on google and got more visitors to his site. Or Made a high ranking landing page and start using that in your adwords campaign so your cost per click went down for that particular keyword?
These are the kind of sites that would use domains that would help them if just a little bit in serp rankings, so they are not worried about a hyphen or two in their name as long as it helps in the serps.
I am sure there are a few people here that now how landing pages other then your website can keep your CPC down when you have a site that is optimized for different keywords, so instead of paying $20 cpc you can reduce it to $10. And use different sites for different keywords. Then on that landing page when they click on anything it takes them to your real site.
I guess this thread is useless and double hyphenated domains are worthless and just as useless.

Not matter what spin you put on it a double hyphenated website is real awkward to pronounce and fails as a brand, now if only someone would come up with something, short, easy to remember and passes the radio test, I know let's call it ebay! I would most likely want a New Gtld before a double hyphen, good luck

DnEbook said:

Not matter what spin you put on it a double hyphenated website is real awkward to pronounce and fails as a brand, now if only someone would come up with something, short, easy to remember and passes the radio test, I know let's call it ebay! I would most likely want a New Gtld before a double hyphen, good luck

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You still don't get it. When your not advertising and only dependong on serp results why the f!@# would you want to pronounce it? You are not making commercials you are ranking first page serp and relying on that and your are not building a brand you are just making money. Where is the spin on that?

from an seo standpoint keyword in domain weighed alot more 6 years ago...then people started buying dashes and google de emphasized its importance in ranking factors ....so back to useless imo....

toughdomains said:

from an seo standpoint keyword in domain weighed alot more 6 years ago...then people started buying dashes and google de emphasized its importance in ranking factors ....so back to useless imo....

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Thank you for not saying it is a horrible way to brand and to hard to spell.
This was the kind of info i was asking for.
Thank you

toughdomains said:

from an seo standpoint keyword in domain weighed alot more 6 years ago...then people started buying dashes and google de emphasized its importance in ranking factors ....so back to useless imo....

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So do you know if google actually penalizes you for hyphens or just relys on good content, links, directory listings, social media and the sort?

urljunky said:

So do you know if google actually penalizes you for hyphens or just relys on good content, links, directory listings, social media and the sort?

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in this search result i see ray-ban in search result so it must not penalize you...

https://www.google.com/search?q=sun..._aAhWnmuAKHVQkD1MQ1QIIwwIoAA&biw=1366&bih=662

but as i wrote above keyword in domain is dialed down in overall rank compared to years ago...thats it...

just make good content is what agencies who dont understand technical aspect of seo focus on...its easy to suggest a content strategy when you have no idea what an xml sitemap is or structured data elements...most agencies dont even know how to get those star rating in the serps..

urljunky said:

You still don't get it. When your not advertising and only dependong on serp results why the f!@# would you want to pronounce it? You are not making commercials you are ranking first page serp and relying on that and your are not building a brand you are just making money. Where is the spin on that?

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So you think a website that is hard to pronounce is good? This was your question, Now to the discussion of double hyphenated domain names? Today nobody wants them, they are worthless, Fast forward 5 years.... Will they be valuable? Will they be just like single hyphens of before. The question was about DOUBLE HYPHENATED DOMAINS. I am more than happy to agree that content is king but a workable address of the content is pretty handy too. We live in a world of short brands. that is the status quo. The e--commerce example may be a little too generic as well.

DnEbook said:

So you think a website that is hard to pronounce is good? This was your question, Now to the discussion of double hyphenated domain names? Today nobody wants them, they are worthless, Fast forward 5 years.... Will they be valuable? Will they be just like single hyphens of before. The question was about DOUBLE HYPHENATED DOMAINS. I am more than happy to agree that content is king but a workable address of the content is pretty handy too. We live in a world of short brands. that is the status quo. The e--commerce example may be a little too generic as well.

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i thought it was clear about what we wrote about the history of why hyphens became popular and then unpopular and ultimately hyphens being cr*p....so double hyphens...double cr*p? So unless Google changes their algo to enhance hyphenated names....its unlikely it will hold value...wont say never or impossible just very very unlikely...imo