LL owners - a hyphen ratio guideline??
 

With the few hours I do have to work on this, I have been seriously running through stuff.
Many thanks to Ramster |bananna| He simply Rocks!!

As many or you already know, I'm seriously mathematically inclined, but I was wondering if any other LL owner has noticed a ratio between the number of hyphens in the URL to the number of 404's months later.

Or am I simply the |pokefun| Elephant Man?

Now I feel seriously challenged... because I have no idea what you are asking :(

Yeah I hear you Dareutwo... In a google forum I follow they have speculated on whether google will start to penalise these sites in the future. There is a strong correlation between url withs more than two hyphens and spammy, scammy (throw-away domains) sites. And yes I have noticed this on Punani as well.

More so if the hyphens are in the third level domain ie: scammy-shit.somedumbdomain.info

Alex

Dare, I think that with statistics you can prove about anything ;)

In some of my domains I use hyphens because I read somewhere that hyphens are seen as spaces by Google (there where an underscore is seen as a character).

abe - don't get me wrong.. the serious webmasters will always be serious webmasters.
However, if I get a new submitter with "type-my-domain-in-here.crap" - well I can bet that will be gone within 90 days.
Just an observation on my part, maybe I should get out more.. lol

I'm sure you and Alex are right. Experience often is worth more then statistics ;)

Sometimes things like that puzzles me. I told you why I use hyphens.
And I don't use third level domains because I think they are a pita.

But why would a cheater more frequently use hyphens and 3th level domains then honest webmasters?

Hi Abe
Apparently that has changed and now Google ranks a phrase in a url whether it has hyphens for spaces or not. For example if you type real estate into google you get urls such as www.realestate.com.au. Perhaps what I suggested earlier is already occurring. No hyphenes urls are showing in those results before number 95.

What's wrong with domains that have hyphens in them? :D

I guess you're right Natalie. Google |angry| |angry|
Probably I drunk to much wine tonight. But the value of hyphened domains goes down. So what does cheaters do?

hehe luckily it is only speculation lol...
http://www.link-o-rama.com
http://www.pun-an-i.com
http://www.cleos-porn-links.com

Of course I think I did say MORE than two :D

Now marks-links.. :)

OK... so now I am awake... and I read others responses I see what you meant! doh!

I have not noticed a high number of hyphen domains being deleted when I run my link checker.

Our Link lists did take a bit of bad hit from google before christmas... had not considered it was because of the hyphens:

link-fabulous.com
premium-sex-links.com

Something to consider I suppose :(

Hi Kezza |waves| I doubt thats why they took a hit, we all went down in pr (mine from a 5 to a 4) regardless of hyphens. I think/hope one or two hyphens isn't a prob but some have 4 and subdomains. I don't think its time to hit the panic button :D That said I won't buy any more domains with them if I can help.

Google is a fickle bitch (but I love her!)...I seem to recall that at one point, Google didn't parse out individual words in non-hyphenated domains. So hyphenated domains became "hot" for a while. But now she seems to find keywords no matter how hard you try to hide them. Next week will probably be different. ;)

well I am pretty sure that the domain names that have hyphens and no reference to porn will live on
http://www.link-o-rama.com
http://www.pun-an-i.com
http://www.link-fabulous.com etc
these domains are not looking for keywords or phrases in the domain name... they are relying on good content on their pages

Hi Natalie |waves|

Where did that come from Nat?

Pretty sure google still treats - as a space and _ as a unique character.. whether it's in a domain name or in any other word. I'd love to know more info on what you have heard has changed.

Hi Opti, Its from the Google News forum at Webmasterworld (via my other half who does seo as part of his job in a large multimedia company). Yes they treat it as a space still but we are saying that a space is not needed anymore. I couldnt find the actual thread to link to but I recommend it as a great read for anyone serious about seo. (hope i am not in trouble gg)

Thanks Nat... I think I get what you are saying better now... I'd love to read that thread if you find it or anyone else knows it.