Domains with hyphens much harder to rank with

The hyphen domain has a better page rank, double amount of indexed pages, and much more backlinks.

I checked the first site with site explorer and it showed 0 backlinks for the first domain and 300 for the second domain.

Since the second domain also has a pagerank of 2 the argument of crap backlinks doesn't hold.

Am I missing something here or is putting hyphens in the domain name as insanely penalized as the screenshot shows?

Fairy Tale nothing more...

pagerank means nothing, you can have a crap site with a pagerank of 4 or even higher and dont rank ... There are many factors and you should look into all of these and not only some backlinks and pr

Parsin said:

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[B]Domains with hyphens much harder to rank with[/B]

Fairy Tale nothing more...

pagerank means nothing, you can have a crap site with a pagerank of 4 or even higher and dont rank ... There are many factors and you should look into all of these and not only some backlinks and pr

Click to expand...

All the other factors are either equal or the domain 2. beats the domain 1. in them.

I know pagerank means nothing in terms of SERPs, I only brought it up to make a point that the 300 backlinks aren't worthless as that would be the first thing to come up to explain all this.

What are the anchors for the links? Doe they have the keyword in it?
How is the page optimized for the keyword?
Does the first site have a better internal linking setup.
Posted via Mobile Device

How many backlinks dohis backlinks have? A large link juice can do that. Maybe just google hasn't indexed the juice yet and thus the PR.

DutchRebel said:

What are the anchors for the links? Doe they have the keyword in it?
How is the page optimized for the keyword?
Does the first site have a better internal linking setup.
Posted via Mobile Device

Click to expand...

Both sites are using same layout and linking structure. (Xfactor or whatever). However, the site ranking 1. is running wordpress and the other is xsitepro site.

I ran anchor checks for 200 first backlinks of the 2. page - about 95% of them have anchor text indoor bug zapper.

Even the domain ages are the same, both are created in august 2009.

I have an exact match .info domain without hyphens and an exact match with hyphens. Both have about 100 backlinks and about the same amount of competition. The one without hyphens is number 10 on page 1 and the one with hyphens isn't even on the first 100 pages. I haven't really put any work into these domains, but I also agree that domains with hyphens are much harder to rank
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Also noticed that several of my domains with a hyphens seems to rank worse than my domains without one for the same domain names. Even with less powerful backlinks but different content though.

I've got a site with a hyphenated name (and it's .info to boot).

It's serp rating by google on the key term, competing against three million others, is bouncing between #12 and #1. Even more, google only lists 15 inbound links. And the site is about ten weeks old.

So go figure!

It definitely matters but theres probably more authority coming from those 20 links on the first site

for those who say page rank doesnt matter...you are missing out...

i have tested this for the past 8 months...and proved it wrong numerous times

i have bought over 500 domains over the last 5 years and with that here are my results...


domain1.net PR 5, 75 same Back Links, 1 indexed page, same keywords, same content
domain2.net PR 0, 75 same back Links, 1 indexed page, same keywords, same content

PR 5 ranks better...

domain3.net PR 3, same as above
domain4.net PR 0, same as above

PR 3 ranks better...

Age is the same for all domains, host is exact same for all domains, keyword and content is exact same for all domains...

yet higher page rank domains rank better

domain1.net PR 5, 75 same Back Links, 1 indexed page, same keywords, same content
domain2.net PR 0, 75 same back Links, 1 indexed page, same keywords, same content
Age is the same for all domains, host is exact same for all domains, keyword and content is exact same for all domains...

Click to expand...

Do you see the problem of your test ?

My domain, for a popular colon cleansing product, has two hyphens in it and is ranked #1 out of 1,800,000. It has less than 50 backlinks, is 2yrs old and ranks above everyone else, even hubpages, blogger and the authority site.

It has a link wheel behind it, each wheel has less than 30 backlinks. 6 spoke wheel made up of web 2.0 properties.

Thats it!

Anyone who says there is a difference needs to be re educated and those people need to check THEIR CONTENT! The site is PR1 btw or at least all the pages show pr1.

So the analysis above is myth and speculation. If in doubt, pop an email off to Google and ask them

Esailija said:

The hyphen domain has a better page rank, double amount of indexed pages, and much more backlinks.

I checked the first site with site explorer and it showed 0 backlinks for the first domain and 300 for the second domain.

Since the second domain also has a pagerank of 2 the argument of crap backlinks doesn't hold.

Am I missing something here or is putting hyphens in the domain name as insanely penalized as the screenshot shows?

Click to expand...

.org tends to outrank most sites in my opinion, even com. I would purchase an .org over any other tld as a marketer because they rank higher in most instances even those .com's which are hyphenated.

If you've read or watched the videos of some of the better courses you will note the author states that this is fact.

I took a look at the ilnks of these two sites.

The one at #2 looks like he was using UAW and was turning out mostly what looks like a bunch of dating tips articles with a little blurb at the end about bug zapper devices (weird). #1 guy has mostly profile links at various forums.

However as you pointed out.. #1 spot guy is using wordpress.. and with that, he is using more sematicly correct coding. #2 guy is using tables etc. I think this all comes down to a matter of onpage factors. There are some considerable difference between these two in that department.

As for the whole hyphen thing. I will be honest, I once believed they had issue also. However, after doing some recent research, I am starting to sway more towards actually PREFERRING the hyphen domain. Why? Well... two reasons.

#1. Using hypens in your keywordcentric domain will ensure that the specified keyword you want google to pickup, is indeed picked up. I know google does its own best to read your domain, but that brings me to reason #2.

#2. CTR. Yes, if a person is searching and finds a domain that is clearly readable with their search term, guess what, they will click on it. One big jumbled mess won't be easily deciphered by many. It's in those first few seconds they glance at the results that you want them to immediately recognize your page as the one with the answer clearly viewable. Hyphens deliver on this.

I tend to believe people who have had a bumb time with hyphens did so only because they treated those sites with the same disregard they treat most of their many tried and failed sites. There is every reason to view them as better, and not as a liability.

Besides my own reasons to this... Others who have asked for expert advice also recieved an answer:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2a3eee1ff6ba7cb8&hl=en

This link also references to a video with matt cuts as well as his post from a while back about the subject of _ vs -.

As far as this sampling is concerned, I say its the onpage factors making the difference.

If I am going to get a keyword domain, I would prefer a hyphen one over one without. I will see better CTR and equaly well rankings. The rest of the world and the niches I target should I use a keyword domain are not marketers, they just want the screen to come back with something that says what they want. Make it easier for them to read, it is easier for them to click. Simple.