Disadvantages or three word domain name

[leverage]

Hi all,
I am currently in the process of coming up with a domain name for a future site.  I was wondering what the disadvantages are of having a three-word domain name like

www.my-domain-name.com

Obviously without the hyphens the domain name would be unreadable (disadvantage).  But with the hyphens it reads fine.  I was wondering if there are other problems with a three word domain name that I am not aware of, since no one seems to have these sorts of domain names.


Cheers,

Leverage

[Andy]

Hi leverage,

I disagree with you. Without hyphens is an advantage. Search engines find the words even without hyphens and users never key in hyphens.

Just look at google search results and you can see the words highlighted even though they are joined up.

I would always try to eliminate hyphens and to get the 2 word name simply add a meaningless character or 2 to the end of the domain name e.g. www.carpartsok.com Keep it as short and memorable as possible. The other keywords can be incorporated into html file names and directory names or even subdirectories.

If you dare, you could post your 2 most important keyworks and let us suggest available domain names  Then dash to register them.

[leverage]

Hi Andy,
You make some good points.

However,. I cant see how the user typing in hyphens or not makes any difference in searches.  Particularly when the search engine seems to scan the string and find the keywords anyway (as you suggested).  So that would mean that hyphens have no added value AND have no disadvantage. So then if this is true then why try to eliminate hyphens? (as you suggested)

If I’m understanding correctly it makes no difference if you have them or not!

So then in your example "www.carpartsok.com" wouldn’t it be more memorable to put "www.car-parts.com" ? the string "ok" on the end adds no value, and as discussed neither does the hyphen in my alternative example.  So really there is no difference between them? Just preference and opinion on what is more understandable.  But no difference from a search engine or user keyword search perspective etc???



Cheers,
Leverage

[SensoVision]

I'm not doing SEO for months and haven't follow all latest news in the search engine world, but in the past domains with hyphens containing keyword do add some value to your results, I may believe that Google don't do this anymore as I think they try to create some algo which hard to abuse but I think that there are some engines that use such methods of calculating relevancy of results. BTW from some time I start using domain www.pharos-search.com instead of links.weblamp.net and I spot that people start to find me a bit more using word "search", of course this could be just because I got better ranking...
anyway, hope this info would help you out a bit

[Andy]

The reason I suggested trying to eliminate the hyphen is because people that manually type in your domain name will tend to forget to include hyphens. At least that is what I have been taught.

Maybe car-parts.com is best where you are only concerned with search engine results since it's shorter and only contains the 2 keywords? But it's much more difficult to find an available domain like this.

[SensoVision]

I agree with this, Andy, and I believe that it's good idea to register both domains with hyphens and without them  if finances permits.

[leverage]

I see,
Thank you.

Leverage

[Hope]

the major downside of the hyphens is when you tell people your web address it is harder to relay the hyphens. Most people will not remember to put them in. That can be a problem.

[johnhask]

The SE's eliminate the hyphens so the string reads the same. I agree with Hope and have gone through the task of having to say word add hyphen word.

I don't think people typing the name into a browser bar should be an issue. At least not with us.