Hyphenated names are way undervalued.

[Josh R]

Hyphenated names are great for building websites and has very little effect on search engine results.

I get that domainers hate hyphenated names because it can certainly hurt type-in traffic, but I feel like resellers have been undervaluing these names just because they are much harder to sell than non hyphenated.

If you find a good hyphenated name, it can definitely be very valuable to certain end-users that want to actually develop a site.

It's a fact that a hyphenated name makes it that much easier to read when looking at the name briefly. For example on a billboard or tv commercial.

Especially when the name is a little longer, it's hard to interpret exactly what the name is, and I think that's why Germans use the hyphenated names so much more.

I can see them increasing in value, because as of right now I see nothing but hate on hyphenated names which aren't always that bad. HAVING SAID THIS, some names that are hyphenated can be garbage when the non hyphenated is valuable.

....Let's hear the objections to my post :D

 

[The New Guy]

It's a great buying opportunity for you then.

There are certain segments of the industry that are undervalued right now, however since I really do believe that I don't announce it publicly. Instead I just keep buying up domains until the market comes around.

 

[inforg]

When you look at many of the good ones, you have to agree that they "should" be more valuable than what they are. They are not entirely unattractive, contain some great keywords many times, and certainly don't hurt in search engines (single hyphen anyway). With so many .com's taken, it wasn't illogical to think they would appreciate in value over time.

Unfortunately, the market has spoken for a long time now, and they just aren't valuable on the whole and that doesn't seem to be changing. There are some outliers and Germans seem to favor them, but most domainers end up realizing the profit/loss on them just doesn't make them worthwhile as investments.

Part of being successful in this business is knowing when to change tactics and admit when things don't play out as expected. Dump the stuff that doesn't work for you, whether that is extension speculation, a specific niche, or hyphens. Spend the savings on stuff that is working for you. Repeat as necessary.

 

[garptrader]

There are three primary factors influencing domain value:

-traffic
-branding potential (short, descriptive, easy to remember)
-keyword value for search engine ranking

A hyphenated domain is going to fail the first two tests (IMO) and after Penguin and Panda exact match domains have much less value for Google than they did previously. EMDs do still get a boost at Bing & Yahoo so a hyphenated .COM still has some value. However, selling domains is challenging enough without creating obstacles which make it more difficult to sell.

A hyphenated domain is OK for a personal blog but generally speaking I don't view hyphenated domains as investment worthy. I only have one hyphenated domain - a .COM in the same business as Victoria Secret.

 

[alistair80]

the issue also lies with "radio test". you can't just ask your rep to ask a customer over the phone to go visit" hyphenated hypen domain dot com

 

[AEProgram]

The guy who owns the non hyphenated version will surely thank you for your efforts!

 

[Domainace]

There is profit to be made with hyphenated domains, and there is even competition when buying the better ones. But they are a good way to slip past the crowd and make some easy money. It will never be huge money, but it's still worth doing if you buy wisely.

I find them difficult to actively sell (by contacting end users). They do nicely in passive sales though, but that requires patience. If you need to sell them quickly to raise cash, you will get burned.

So far as whether they will rise in value, that's pure speculation. I wouldn't bet on it, personally.

 

[momentum]

For SEO purposes, hyphenated domains aren't bad. For potential sales, don't get your hopes up. Trust me, I wish it wasn't true because I have quite a few myself.

 

[DomainVP]

Time for a long winded response, no objections to anyones points, just some insight

here we go...

After developing for 10+ years its painfully obvious that most companies don't even understand the internet, especially the general public. Which is good and bad for all of us right now.

Companies treat domains like billboards, and they use domains like vanity plates. Most purchased domains used so poorly its sad.

Imagine if you had a 14' high x 48'wide high def video 1080p billboard that could display advertisements and videos 24/7 maximizing visibility and space... and then you took a bucket of glue and pasted a print ad over it.

Thats pretty much how efficiently most companies are using domains right now.

Case in point... After reviewing the public historical sales list I see luck.com sold for $650k+

It is a great name yes, however there are only 60,000 searches for it online, only 14,800 monthly searches in the U.S. Everyone that is a domainer should at least own some .COM keyword names with at least 14,800 monthly U.S. searches; thats not hard at all.

Just search luck in google and look what comes up... not Luck.com. Go and check out their site... blank, empty, nothing. It does not take years to turn out a decent site... casino gambling is here... so where is Luck.com?

Someone spent $650k+ on Luck.com and it's not doing anything at all... maybe it was an investor... who knows.

Why spend a massively huge sum of money on a domain with a search volume that is negligible for the price that was paid. Yes, "Luck" is easy to remember... but so are so many other words that are less expensive, with a much higher search rate, and just as easy to remember.

This is just one example. I can't review every use of a domain purchase... some companies get it right, most of them get it wrong.

SEO in general seems to escape even developers. Keep in mind that they guy that does php, asp, MySQL, iOS7, Android, HTML5 coding might not know anything about SEO which employs a completely different discipline of research and knowledge base.

In the end it's just painfully obvious that there is no set rhyme or reason to most domain purchases. Domains are worth what people will pay for them, and those decisions are regularly based on vanity or relativity to their business.

I believe that Rick Schwartz has regularly said that he sees domain purchases as being the 'ultimate vanity' for businesses online.

Which is exactly why brandable domains can sell for a great deal of money, if you have a quality short brandable.

Here are most companies thought process... Let's build a website and focus on print ads and television ads promoting our online portal, we need a short memorable domain, What's SEO, we don't know, but Gems.COM is for sale that would be GREAT for us since we sell costume jewelry, how much is it, $400k... okay buy it our budget is $5mil for advertising, so we are okay for the rest of they year.

So for a company to own a hyphenated .COM and focus on SEO at this point in time is a long shot. Eventually business will catch up and understand how hyphenated domains work, and they will have decent value depending on their SEO metrics... but never the massive value of the non hyphenated .COM version.

Hyphenated domain sales will increase. I recently spoke with a developer who bought a short hyphenated name who I believe paid 5 or 6 figures for the name (they would not say the purchase price, but after I gave them my valuation they inferred that I was fairly close to their own metrics).

It made sense for them in their business model and promotions approach. it was the cheaper equally effective buy for them in their namespace.

Owning the non hyphenated version was their first option... but the owner wanted a high 6 figure sum.

If I were a business searching for a domain for my core business, I would want the non-hyphenated, short, search driven, brandable domain name.

If I were a business looking to compete in a highly searched namespace, and I could not get the non hyphenated .COM, I would go for the hyphenated version if the metrics and pricing was right.

Happy day to all! :D

 

[ursuake]

A hyphenated domain is going to fail the first two tests (IMO) and after Penguin and Panda exact match domains have much less value for Google than they did previously.

Erm, speaking from experience on this one mate?

EMD's haven't been easier to rank as they are now. Know what changed? The ammount of work and backlink resources needed to rank EMD's. It takes a whole lot less time and resources to do this now

I'm ranking EMD's now easier than 2 years ago. Stop quoting others and test for yourself before saying this

 

[AEProgram]

Time for a long winded response, no objections to anyones points, just some insight

here we go...

After developing for 10+ years its painfully obvious that most companies don't even understand the internet, especially the general public. Which is good and bad for all of us right now.

Companies treat domains like billboards, and they use domains like vanity plates. Most purchased domains used so poorly its sad.

Imagine if you had a 14' high x 48'wide high def video 1080p billboard that could display advertisements and videos 24/7 maximizing visibility and space... and then you took a bucket of glue and pasted a print ad over it.

Thats pretty much how efficiently most companies are using domains right now.

Case in point... After reviewing the public historical sales list I see luck.com sold for $650k+

It is a great name yes, however there are only 60,000 searches for it online, only 14,800 monthly searches in the U.S. Everyone that is a domainer should at least own some .COM keyword names with at least 14,800 monthly U.S. searches; thats not hard at all.

Just search luck in google and look what comes up... not Luck.com. Go and check out their site... blank, empty, nothing. It does not take years to turn out a decent site... casino gambling is here... so where is Luck.com?

Someone spent $650k+ on Luck.com and it's not doing anything at all... maybe it was an investor... who knows.

Why spend a massively huge sum of money on a domain with a search volume that is negligible for the price that was paid. Yes, "Luck" is easy to remember... but so are so many other words that are less expensive, with a much higher search rate, and just as easy to remember.

This is just one example. I can't review every use of a domain purchase... some companies get it right, most of them get it wrong.

SEO in general seems to escape even developers. Keep in mind that they guy that does php, asp, MySQL, iOS7, Android, HTML5 coding might not know anything about SEO which employs a completely different discipline of research and knowledge base.

In the end it's just painfully obvious that there is no set rhyme or reason to most domain purchases. Domains are worth what people will pay for them, and those decisions are regularly based on vanity or relativity to their business.

I believe that Rick Schwartz has regularly said that he sees domain purchases as being the 'ultimate vanity' for businesses online.

Which is exactly why brandable domains can sell for a great deal of money, if you have a quality short brandable.

Here are most companies thought process... Let's build a website and focus on print ads and television ads promoting our online portal, we need a short memorable domain, What's SEO, we don't know, but Gems.COM is for sale that would be GREAT for us since we sell costume jewelry, how much is it, $400k... okay buy it our budget is $5mil for advertising, so we are okay for the rest of they year.

So for a company to own a hyphenated .COM and focus on SEO at this point in time is a long shot. Eventually business will catch up and understand how hyphenated domains work, and they will have decent value depending on their SEO metrics... but never the massive value of the non hyphenated .COM version.

Hyphenated domain sales will increase. I recently spoke with a developer who bought a short hyphenated name who I believe paid 5 or 6 figures for the name (they would not say the purchase price, but after I gave them my valuation they inferred that I was fairly close to their own metrics).

It made sense for them in their business model and promotions approach. it was the cheaper equally effective buy for them in their namespace.

Owning the non hyphenated version was their first option... but the owner wanted a high 6 figure sum.

If I were a business searching for a domain for my core business, I would want the non-hyphenated, short, search driven, brandable domain name.

If I were a business looking to compete in a highly searched namespace, and I could not get the non hyphenated .COM, I would go for the hyphenated version if the metrics and pricing was right.

Happy day to all! :D

Now that was a solid long winded post, APPRECIATE IT!

I think we can all agree it comes down to ones goals.

Buying domains and allowing it to just sit there is no different from those mega real estate developers that will buy up land and wait for a while to either build it out or resell it.

Not all business goals are the same. The business that their main focus is SEO might be fine with a hyphenated name while the business that wants to sell ads on their site might need a solid non hyphenated .com.

 

[alistair80]

Nope..what he means is essentially that it comes down to money...if your budget is low and you are desperate, hyphen is what you get!

 

[briguy]

Just to throw in my two cents... I stopped buying domains with numbers and hyphens in them! Why do you ask, because I been using my cellphone/smartphone more lately than my laptop, and since I am basically lazy (aren't most internet users?).. I hate going through the extra step of hitting the "?123" ( or alt, etc) just to get a hyphen (number) when I put a domain in my search bar!
Just my two cent..

 

[buyselldoms]

Hyphenated names are great for building websites and has very little effect on search engine results.

I get that domainers hate hyphenated names because it can certainly hurt type-in traffic, but I feel like resellers have been undervaluing these names just because they are much harder to sell than non hyphenated.

If you find a good hyphenated name, it can definitely be very valuable to certain end-users that want to actually develop a site.

It's a fact that a hyphenated name makes it that much easier to read when looking at the name briefly. For example on a billboard or tv commercial.

Especially when the name is a little longer, it's hard to interpret exactly what the name is, and I think that's why Germans use the hyphenated names so much more.

I can see them increasing in value, because as of right now I see nothing but hate on hyphenated names which aren't always that bad. HAVING SAID THIS, some names that are hyphenated can be garbage when the non hyphenated is valuable.

....Let's hear the objections to my post :D

a) how many domain names do you own (assume non-hyphened)?

b) are you willing to buy 9 times the number of domain names you have for hyphened names?

If your answer to b is NO, and you cannot put your money where you mouth is (don't mean it to sound rude or offensive)... that shows your lack of confidence in hyphenated domain names.

Germans use hyphenated domain names, but probably just a single hyphen, some of the examples of hyphenated domain names on steroids showcased on this forum recently is beyond madness.

Germany is a big economy - biggest in Europe - but has a smaller internet penetration than the UK for example (surprising considering how poor internet speeds are in the UK). However, its not a widely spoken language, its dwarfed by many other Indo-European languages.

T-online (tmobile) is the only hyphenated website in the top 50 popular usage, when you exclude hyphenated .de domain names, when it comes to .com there are very few top 1000 websites.

Not that many people do so when buying a domain name or two... but before you spend serious cash on quantity (especially when renewal fees on thousands rake up especially if not well monetised) you need to consider PESTEL analysis (to some... PESTLE).

What when Google drops thousands of junk hyphenated domain names? The value could go from well-inflated to zero over night. (but its cost you money to buy and keep the renewal up) I am confident that Google will implement such a change in a future algorithm update, in particular multiple hyphenated domains.

What is clear with .com, .net, .org and co and the growth of the internet fewer decent names are becoming available... except they are... thousands of new domain extensions, I think Google will have a rethink, determine how to favour certain domain extensions for certain types of websites, or at least categorise them better (i.e. assuming .bar is a bar etc) and hyphenated domains and long domains with get penalised. lets wait and see.

 

[buyselldoms]

Just to throw in my two cents... I stopped buying domains with numbers and hyphens in them! Why do you ask, because I been using my cellphone/smartphone more lately than my laptop, and since I am basically lazy (aren't most internet users?).. I hate going through the extra step of hitting the "?123" ( or alt, etc) just to get a hyphen (number) when I put a domain in my search bar!
Just my two cent..

Spot on. Website are becoming responsive more and more overnight. More and more people are using their mobiles and tablets to access websites. Its not just something you are going to be able to input very easily... even if you speak it! lol :D

Furthermore, hyphenated websites just look spammish.

 

[Josh R]

a) how many domain names do you own (assume non-hyphened)?

b) are you willing to buy 9 times the number of domain names you have for hyphened names?

If your answer to b is NO, and you cannot put your money where you mouth is (don't mean it to sound rude or offensive)... that shows your lack of confidence in hyphenated domain names.

Germans use hyphenated domain names, but probably just a single hyphen, some of the examples of hyphenated domain names on steroids showcased on this forum recently is beyond madness.

Germany is a big economy - biggest in Europe - but has a smaller internet penetration than the UK for example (surprising considering how poor internet speeds are in the UK). However, its not a widely spoken language, its dwarfed by many other Indo-European languages.

T-online (tmobile) is the only hyphenated website in the top 50 popular usage, when you exclude hyphenated .de domain names, when it comes to .com there are very few top 1000 websites.

Not that many people do so when buying a domain name or two... but before you spend serious cash on quantity (especially when renewal fees on thousands rake up especially if not well monetised) you need to consider PESTEL analysis (to some... PESTLE).

What when Google drops thousands of junk hyphenated domain names? The value could go from well-inflated to zero over night. (but its cost you money to buy and keep the renewal up) I am confident that Google will implement such a change in a future algorithm update, in particular multiple hyphenated domains.

What is clear with .com, .net, .org and co and the growth of the internet fewer decent names are becoming available... except they are... thousands of new domain extensions, I think Google will have a rethink, determine how to favour certain domain extensions for certain types of websites, or at least categorise them better (i.e. assuming .bar is a bar etc) and hyphenated domains and long domains with get penalised. lets wait and see.

Only have 2 hyphenated names but they are both pretty good ones with monthly searches over 200k, and obviously no more than 1 hyphen.

I was only referring to very premium hyphenated names, as i said in the first post, some are garbage.

I also said that they can have value for companies/ end users... I know that to resell, they are extremely difficult.

 

[S-B]

I completely agree with you. I picked up Hard-Drive.com for dirt cheap. While domainers aren't interested, I am sure there is a company out there that would like the domain. Until then... I will wait for the right enduser.

 

[Kate]

Germans use hyphenated domain names, but probably just a single hyphen, some of the examples of hyphenated domain names on steroids showcased on this forum recently is beyond madness.

In .de 1 out of two domains is hyphenated. Hyphens are not popular in the US, to a certain extent it is a cultural thing. I still avoid them, because they are not great for branding but they can be valuable. You need to pick them carefully.
But if you look at reported sales, they are clearly a small segment of the market.

 

[DomainVP]

A German hyphenated .COM owner offered me 500 EUR for a the non hyphenated .COM exact match of their company name that they do not hyphenate in all of their logos and production pieces.

They are a multi-million dollar company, and their name cannot be trademarked or copyrighted against my domain because it is a generic last name with fair use etc...

I sent them this as a reply : 9

Their offer was cute, and so was my reply.

 

[buyselldoms]

A German hyphenated .COM owner offered me 500 EUR for a the non hyphenated .COM exact match of their company name that they do not hyphenate in all of their logos and production pieces.

They are a multi-million dollar company, and their name cannot be trademarked or copyrighted against my domain because it is a generic last name with fair use etc...

I sent them this as a reply : 9

Their offer was cute, and so was my reply.

haha, good pun!

Although you might have been able to significantly negotiate above that.