When purchasing a URL, do you find there to be a difference between the following (for SEO purposes):

http://www.keywordkeyword.com

http://www.keyword-keyword.com

http://www.keyword_keyword.com

Any and all thoughts appreciated...but specifically interested in whether there would be an SEO difference between the three ways of registering...

Thanks,

Josh

There used to be a difference but not anymore. At one time you needed to use the dashed version in order for Google to pick out the keywords but they fixed that a couple of years ago.

I am not sure about the other engines (I don't pay them too much attention) though so I usually still try and stick with the version with the dashes.

I don't think that either or plays a very significant role in ranking website. With that being said, it doesn't hurt to at least find wesite that contains main keyword you are marketing. MSN seems to rank websites with city real estate higher than google or yahoo. You will see different results with different SEs and of course also depends on content and links you use with each site.

doug is right, here's a post from Matt Cutts way back 2005 about dash vs underscore in URL http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

Excellent - thanks!

It doesn't matter a bit. Like Doug said it used to way back.... A guy in or office has both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of his domain name.

The original non-hyphenated version he put up a funky flash enabled site with all the bells and whistles and no SEO and bad coding. It got limited results.

Four months ago he purchased the hyphenated version to start fresh. The designer used good clean html a asp reciprocal link system and articles. He has a PR4 and lots of number one positions for the keywords he is targeting.

Moral of the story is clean code, good back links,a good quality content are what ultimately count for a productive web site.

Oh, there is most definitely a difference. Believe me, no dashes or underscores. I believe even Mark Cutts (from Google) talks about this.

You want a .com with nothing but letters. Symbols are seen as very spammy, and if you want proof, do a quick resale value check of the domain with dashes versus no dashes. You'll see dashes make a significant impact on the value of a domain.

The original question specifically asked about hyphens in a domain in regard to SEO.

For the purposes of SEO and organic search engine listing and thus traffic the hyphen does not matter.

If you want to get into a discussion on branding and resale value than yes maybe the hyphens matter.

Well, if you want to get technical about it, a hyphen can actually offer a small SEO benefit, but only if done right (it ultimately depends on the keyword phrases you're targeting).

And as far as underscores go, Google announced last year that they would now be treated the same as hyphens, so the same rule applies. (Up till mid 2007, this was not so)

However, if you're talking long term, which I know is not the question, but it should still be noted since most real estate sites are long term, there is research that shows hyphenated and especially underscored domains are significantly more difficult to remember, and therefore can have a negative impact on your direct visitors, so please keep that in mind when considering your domain.

But if you're using a hyphenated or underscored domain for just a landing-page site, by all means go for it; I just didn't want to provide you with the impression that hyphenated or underscored domains are actually better (because of their small SEO benefit), because for anything more than a landing-page website, they really aren't when you consider longer term visitors.

I have some websites with hyphens and some without. I would generally stay away from underscores but that's just an old habit. You can still get a good, optimized site and rank high in search engines with hyphens. It really is going to depend on your keywords and the code (as someone else already mentioned). Just as a note, though this isn't really the most important thing to consider when choosing your domain. You will get more traffic from perhaps unrelated searches with a domain without hyphens. It is debatable as to whether this is an actual benefit or not, but if you had a site such as handstandemporer.com (yes a random example I know) your url would be considered in searches for hand stand emporer, hands tandem pore, etc. and any other unintended search phrases that may pop up in your url (You'd be surprised what you might pop up for), while with hyphens the words will be separated, eliminating the accidental meshing of words.

Just a quick note: I have picked domains before because they were better for SEO and then later regretted it because it was too long and cumbersome.