Does Google Hate Multiple Dashes In The Domain Name?
While analyzing the domain names of thousands of websites appearing in the top rankings in the Google results pages for a variety of search phrases, I noticed that there is only a VERY small number of websites at the top which have more than 2 or 3 dashes in their domain names.
I have a hunch that Google uses an excessive number of dashes in the domain names to detect spam and the websites in question must have to pass through an even stricter spam test. And it goes without saying that most such domain names are registered by the ‘hit-and-run’ spammers to rank well in Yahoo! and MSN in the short run.
As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t seem out of the question. To identify spam, all major search engines are known to have devised such flags that when triggered put a possible spam website to a relatively tough test and either completely delist it or lower its rankings once it fails and is successfully identified as spam.
So, in my opinion, it is better to create a sub-domain on an existing website without many dashes than registering a domain with plenty of dashes therein. Or better yet, register short, easy to remember domain names without dashes.
6 Responses to 'Does Google Hate Multiple Dashes In The Domain Name?'
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on April 17th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
This template looks good… It’s hard to pick one, isn’t it?
on April 18th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Not to mention the fact that many surfers will view your site as spam when it has too many dashes and it hurts the CTR. The amount of visits lost can’t be made up by the ever so slight benefit you MAY get by having keywords in the domain.
on April 19th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
I like this one better
on April 20th, 2006 at 12:34 am
Nadir - I’m still playing with different themes. This isn’t the final.
Jason - That’s true. The title, description and domain name are what the surfers see in the SERPs. If they are spamish-looking, most of the surfers don’t bother clicking them. Instead, they click on a site that is lower in ranking than the spamy site or change their query a bit.
on May 4th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Well, since I often hate sites with URLs (esp. domains) with lotsa dashes, I feel that Google should too
In fact I made (well, sort of…) a little search engine that filters out all hits with more than two dashes. Better serps? Definitely!
on May 5th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Apart from excessive use of dashes, the length of domain name must be VERY important for Google to identify a possible spamming site, IMHO!