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Ryan - I think you are turning this into a crusade. I have been in this game a long time and have learned to think out of the box. I am familiar with all the concepts you mention above but will say - things don't always turn out like the recipe predicts.

I was not denigrating SEO Moz - I am here, am I not? I only said none of the Moz quotes actually stated empirically that there is a measurable or provable penalty for using (not abusing) the hyphen

I am very aware of the the of lack of objectivity I would encounter defending an unpopular concept so I think I will rest my case by saying I have cast reasonable doubt on the guilt of prodigiously applied hyphens.

**The question goes unanswered - how does hyphenating brain-games.com for a site about brain games, constitute spam? Using various negative examples as models would be like saying since many people keyword stuff, keywords are spammy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic**

http://blog.silktide.com/2011/06/how-one-tiny-hyphen-destroyed-our-seo-efforts/

The above link you cite tells me a number of things

1 - it is a blog, not a conventional web site, as I refer to. I don't work on blogs

2 - Blog URL's are error prone because the code is auto generated

3 - ON the conservative side - too many hyphens

You appear to doubt the validity of the test, as do I.

Sometimes I think this business is like playing pin the tail on the donkey - blindfolded, trying to hit the target.. The only empirical data I can provide at this time is -

1 - Google, and especially Yahoo, publicly state the importance they put on keywords in the URL

2 - The SEO Moz On-Page Optimization ONLY recognizes keywords in domain portion of the URL when hyphenated.

3 - the hyphen is recognized as the preferred word separator syntax. When, for example, 3 words are separated by hyphens, the search bot will search all three - in all combinations of order.

4 - No authority has given any measurable negatives - just suspicions based on hunches.

Everybody else can do as they wish, but I will continue to believe what I see, not what I hear.

Actually, I do have proof. And I did read the article. In it he cited an example of shoes.com vs. buy-cheap-shoes.com. A domain like shoes.com is not only way gone, it is too general. Ergo, worthless if you could get it.

buy-cheap-shoes.com sounds spammy, hyphens or not. So, the metrics he cites may be skewed by the fact that whenever an effective method becomes known it is done to death and with the poor judgement of wannabees. The word "Viagra" is now officially deemed spammy. Does that mean Pfizer can't market their own product. Can their own name be spam? I think it is case by case.

We need to be careful of too-general spam accusations or it could get like Senator McCarthy and the communists.

If the Moz on page optimization recognizes the URL ladies-shoes.com as containing "ladies shoes" keywords in the url, but does not credit ladiesshoes.com similarly, that is concrete evidence of my point.

My main question then is - how does a hyphen, in and of itself, convert ladiesshoes.com into spam - if the site sells ladie's shoes? Especially in view of the fact that the bots apparently only recognize the keywords in the domain when hyphenated?

I think the main thing is don't overdo it.

I'm not trying to be a wise guy, but rather trying to understand where the spam part of this concept came from.

First, what is spam? Unwanted email or a site that represents other than what it is. If a site were named free-stock-quotes.com and it indeed gave free stock quotes, wherein lies the spam?

In the reference to the "weak" site, I was concentrating on two factors - it is  smaller than the competition and has no real rank due to "who links to a auto air site"? However, it rapidly became number one in all three SE's. Why? Because the domain name matched the search and the content fit the domain name. Where is the spam in that?

To reiterate my question - where did the reference to spam come from? How does hyphenating two relevant words convert them to spam?

"....some SEOs have theorized it is a spam indicator which Google may consider."

I have evidenced superior results with hyphenated domains - not theorized or heard rumors. I also routinely see domains with low ranik and superior construction beat much higher ranking sites to the top. It's not all about rank

"A simple domain name has more opportunities to receive direct traffic."

That is entirely based on the quaint notion that peole know what and where the URL bar is AND remember your domain name too. That's why I use shortcut domain names - register the "search name" and put the short one on your cards, etc. I am amazed that I have to say seUP.net more than once. A short name is still no guarantee. Search results is what SEO is about, is it not?

AS MOBILES DOMINATE GLOBALLY - a domain name's function will be more like a scanned UPC than a phone number you dial manually.

(Half a billion people accessed mobile Internet worldwide in 2009. Usage is expected to double within five years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web)

I still have yet to see compelling data that hyphenating a domain name is considered spam by Google, etc.

**"Google ranks domains with keywords in them highly, even if they contain hyphens"....Rand Fishkin

"...though I'm guessing part of Google's spam filter early warning system does look at hyphens"....Rand Fishkin** (...Google looks at everything and a hyphen is a thing. Google also looks at keywords - and punishes when you use too many [stuffing]. It is logical that hyphens are in the mix with a thousand other factors, being evaluated for use or abuse)

I think you're stretching my comment a bit. There's definitely competition for auto air in SW Florida, Also, it isn't really a "weak" site, just a small one with low page rank (no incoming links).

My point was - auto air is certainly easier than business brokers and realtors, whom I do more work for. There's lot's of them and they are highly competitive. This tactic is working there too.

Your point with California-Realty.com relies on the fact that people actually type URL's anymore, and is easily solved by getting both versions and rolling one over to the other. I get impatient sometimes when clients can't get to a URL until I realize they're typing it into a search box.

I am a bit confused as to where the assumption came from that indicating the logical break between words constitutes spam. Where did this assumption come from? I have never heard Google mention it. They recommend hyphenatiing keywords. It's easier for the bots to make sense of a string of words stuck together.

And where is the evidence that CTR is influenced by the domain name? That isn't logical.

"Reject Hyphens and Numbers
Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type."

Reject numbers yes, but I have to disagree on the hyphens. Google proclaims that hyphens are the correct syntax for word separation and I have seen superior performance with hyphenated domain names. The above article does not mention anything about spam- just the ease of typing & rememberance without hyphens.

Since I also build the sites I have the opportunity to influence the naming. business-sales-sarasota.com had an amazingly short climb to page one results, and for ease of typing and rememberance I got him sbbfl.com for his cards - and I roll that one over to the more search friendly name. So, the clients know the site as sbbfl.com and Google, etc. knows it by the keyworded name.

I have often used a two name system - one for the search and one for the cards.

Some say hyphenated domain names are "spammy". I have also noticed that Moz's On Page Keyword Tool does NOT recognize keywords in a non-hyphenated domain name. So one would assume neither do the bots.

I noticed obviously misleading words like car in carnival or spa in space or spatula, etc embedded in domain names and pondered the effect.

I took it a step further with non-hyphenated domain names. I experimented by selecting totally random three or four letter blocks -

Example: randomfactgenerator.net - rand omf act gene rator

Each one of those clips returns copious results AND the On-Page Report Card does not credit the domain name as containing "random facts" as keywords**,** whereas www.business-sales-sarasota.com does get credit for "business sales sarasota" in the URL.

This seems an obvious situation - unhyphenated domains can scramble the keywords and confuse the bots, as they search all possible combinations. YES -  I know the content should carry it but - I do not believe domain names are irrelevant, as many say.

I don't believe that hyphenated domain names are not more efficient than non hyphenated ones - as long as you don't overdo it. I have also seen where a weak site in an easy market  will quickly top the list because the hyphenated domain name matches the search term - I have done it (in my pre Seo Moz days) with ft-myers-auto-air.com. I built the site in a couple of days and in a couple weeks it was on page one.

Any thoughts on this?

I had my server admin do a 301 redirect from the www to the non-www version of a site at the server level (probably like above) - and had no duplicate content issues crop up. That was accomplished without canonical tagging page by page. I do this now with all sites hosted where I have an admin - I am not a backend administrator.

I agree - it was Google itself that suggested hyphenating keywords in url's.

Example - I was just using the Moz keyword tool on a site named sellmybusinesscolorado.com. The search term it was tuned to was "sell business colorado". The tool, and so likely the bots, did not recognize those very words in that long URL. Had it been hyphenated - they would have been recognized.

What brought me here was - is hyphenating, itself, non kosher in a sub domain? Thomas, coincidentally - the subdomain I was pondering is pest-control.straza.com. He is a business broker that sells a lot of pest control businesses. I also would do medical.straza.com. These subs will deal with their namesakes as if they were the only businesses they sell.

Google recognizes the hyphen as the universal word separator. I stopped using underbars ten years ago - a nasty habit I learned from programmers.

I think it is more the ABUSE of a good thing, as it always is, that should be avoided.

........... I didn't name that site, by the way ;-]

EGOL - we could pretty much bet our lives on you being correct. A large corporate site would be crazy to hire freelancers ($$$). They surely have a staff of W2 employees or, at the very least, an outsource consisting of staff employees. Successful corporations are into "team spirit" motivationals and like direct contact and control of people collaborating on their public image.

I had an epphany on footer links. Since I specialize in business broker sites it dawned on me Ithere is a relevancy issue - business broker to web design is a mismatch.

What I did was create a couple of "business broker specialty" pages, then worded the anchor text accordingly. The pages quickly attained individual rank and I started getting more response forms.

In addition to creating relevancy I also let them know I know about their business. I generally do SEO as part of a site rebuild.

Thanks to both you and Keri - Even though my hype barks loudly of SEO I am a web designer who has had great luck in organic SEO via good page construction and my copywriting skills. I don't really "tune" other's sites - I rebuild them, usually in hand coded classic asp. Ergo, I am not actually a classic SEO service like many here.

I am finding that I am facing my next tech upgrade here with off-page issues like this one.

I got rid of the htaccess and added the above code in the head. I have never used htaccess like this before and use a format tailored to the server this site resides on. adapting it may have caused the gaffe.

Again, many thanks.

I had the server admin do a 301 on www.search-engine-upgrade.com to the non www, but I have to admit, I had no idea I had to do similar with the default page....Jeeze!

Well shiver me timbers. I  never figgered your homepage could compete with itself! I guess it's time for me to stop depending on my old-school wordsmithery (old school here only goes back to the mid 90's) and get a new pocket protector ,-]

Thanks for the help & prompt reply. I have already deployed the htaccess

I am not understanding this - I see a duplicate content warning. When I look into it I see these two urls:

http;//search-engine-upgrade.com

http;//search-engine-upgrade.com/default.asp

(NOT a blog)