Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking?

[Radomski]

Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking? or it dosen't really matter?

[Gamer07]

No it doesn't matter. If it's an Exact Match, Search Engines still see it as one, with or without the dash.

[David_ODonnell]

I think it gets a bit spammy when you have 2,3 or more dashes in a domain name, the only reason you'd need that many is to make a super keyword rich domain name.

[SanketPatel]

Hi.

According to me dash doesn't affect your ranking but it use for separating two words ya category for example www.domain.com/seo-affiliate.php. Over here dash is used for saperating this two words. Search engine algorithms are advanced enough to identify two separate words without a space so no need to put dash. If your domain name is too long then you can use dash because,  i thought domain names with dashes were less memorable than domain names without. If you decide to use a hyphenated domain, use the hyphens to separate your keywords where needed. By using dash in your domain names you are able to retain your original choice and also keep the keyword in its exact order but people sometimes forgot to type dash when there are looking for particular website so there is chance to losing visitors. So don't use dash in your domain is batter for ranking and traffic purpose.

[YNWA]

I would say it doesn't matter unless of course you are having a domain like www.this-is-my-colourful-nice-seo-friendly-website.com.

We use ours to say -online.com just to seperate it out. However our new domain doesn't have one in and we have two words together.

As long as you have something people can search on or recognise I think it will be ok.