Hyphens

[buddybuddha]

Im not planning on reselling a domain name, but I was considering buying one that is exactly the name Im looking for, but its only available with a hyphen between the words. I dont think it could be trademarked, because its very generic, and theres no site at the dotcom without the hyphen anyway. How do hyphenated domains fare these days?

 

[user-7256]

Hyphen cuts the value at least in half IMO.

 

[dongan]

Hyphen reduces the value. but, if both words are good keywords, you can buy.

 

[DomainSage]

I agree that in most cases the hypen will dramatically reduce the value. There are a few exceptions though, for example :
Trex > A type of lard
T-Rex > A great band


All the best.

Richard

 

[AdoptableDomains]

For developement, you will lose some type in traffic to the non-hyphenated .com. If you can live with that, no big deal. Trouble is you never know who will get the unhyphenated version. A direct competitor or a porn site could be a very big detraction.

In some cases hyphenated is actually better, but if at all possible you would still want the other version. (example: Students-Exchange.com can have a totally different meaning when the hyphen is removed and a search engine thinks its a 3 word domain instead of 2)

 

[peter phillips]

With hyphen in a domain you may lose type-in traffic to the non hyphenated name. Hyphenated domain names are better for SEO because the search engines can actually pick out keywords from the domain name URL.

 

[zachbb]

yes, hyphens do reduced the value of a domain for resale. If you are buying it for parking, then you probably get much less visitors with a hyphen. For a website, hyphens are hard to remember, people tend to try unhyphenated versions of names first. As peter said, two hyphenated keywords can be good for search engines, but then again, even unhyphenated domains get keywords picked out (try to search for Finer Concept on google and finerconcept.com comes up first, even though it has PR 0)

Zach

 

[Momo]

A lot of people tend to forget the hyphen when typing in domain names, so be prepared to lose an amount of traffic if you register the hyphenated version.

 

[gericsb]

This is an interesting discussion..I have been wondering the same things myself, Specifically, when the dictionary word IS hyphenated. I have several hyphenated dictionary .coms, .nets, ,us's and .info;s like: co-captain.com co-defendant.com
co-ed.us co-star.info but can not for the life of me figure out the value of these!

 

[Genialnames]

This of the hypen is a difficult matter.
I basically agree with those whose says that usually the same words are better if not hypenated, but also I agree with Domainsage there are cases where an hyphen is even mandatory to avoid ridiculous situations.

For type-ins I don't know if what Peter Phillips say it works always, take the example of "student-books-exchange" or "studentsbooksexchange"(just for the example purposes) I am not sure google can correctly discriminate the correct meaning.

Also in a similar case I would prefer the hypenated version since it is more easy to misstype a long word ....

I had a similar problem these days with a domain I would like to register and that contain the word "-technology" after the hypen, I think I will register both.

The best would be to register both, but only in the case the .com it is free, otherwise it could be very expensive to register both in varoius extensions, maybe also in singular and plural version.

 

[buddybuddha]

(example: Students-Exchange.com can have a totally different meaning when the hyphen is removed and a search engine thinks its a 3 word domain instead of 2)

lol, I think I might just buy it and see what happens. I dont plan on developing it right away, but better snag it before someone else does.

 

[cocaine]

most of people get boared and forget to type hyphen i thnk .
its not gud

 

[fonzie_007]

As other people have said, hyphens do reduce the value of a domain and its traffic. It may not hurt for your to reg the hyphenated version of the domain and then work with the registrant of the non-hyphenated version and see if you can get him/her to sell it to you.