QuoteSEO experts SEOmoz recommend not to use hyphens in URLs
I call BS right there and then
Interesting article, but it could be more complicated than what their conclusion is.
- the penalty could be from an analysis from the initial crawl
- the penalty could be an A+B trigger: if spammy content and hyphens then pentalty
Added:
Also, there could be a lot of other things causing this, like whois info or a spammed out server. I am not saying they are wrong, but I wouldn't exactly call this scientific.
I wouldn't imagine that the combination of "had spammy content" then "now has content taken from another website" would be a great indicator either.
surely that entire article is a paid link post for Moz? I can't see any other reason people would write such random shit in public ???
Baaah, I would bet my next unborn child that it has nothing to do with the hyphen. Does not make any sense what-so-ever.
That article is written with such naivete and lack of attention - he says SEOMoz recommends against hyphens in URLs as if URLs and domains are synonyms. I'm sure he knows better, but it's an indication of how much time and thought was put into the article.
In addition to ideas mentioned here, how about this theory...
I believe based on fairly subjective observations, that when you create a new site or a lot of new content on an existing site, Google "auditions" the content. If Google is going to say that user interactions might be a better measure than links and keywords, then it means that it has to get that content in front of users for an audition to gather data. If after a while it gets no clicks or it gets clicks but the users come back after 12 seconds, then the audition is over and the content doesn't get the part.
So I just wonder if the first site actually ranked based on decent content, and then when Google sees a huge influx of content and has previously decided the content on the site is good, whether the crap content gets an audition until user metrics come in. I'd like to see how things are going in another few weeks, for example.
Rather than hyphen/non-hyphen, it might be that the lesson is to seed a site with quality content that will get a decent time-on-page from readers, and once that's established, you can let quality slide.
The other lesson is that Google is still dumb and can't see spam algorithmically. I recently read something from Matt Cutts (or Google help) regarding dupe content that said "Imagine you're looking at a page in a foreign language and you don't know any of the words. If you can tell two pages are the same based on word repetition, that's duplicate content. If it's only similar in concept, then it's not." In other words, tacit admission that Google cant' really see spun pages as dupes if the spinning is good.
And just FTR...
QuoteFor urls in Google, I would recommend using dashes
-- Matt Cutts, 2005
here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ (and reiterated recently in a webmaster video).
QuoteNow if you are still on the fence, let me just give you a bit of color. that we have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains, & some people have complained that we are giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains. So we have been thinking about at adjusting that mix a bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given 2 different domains it wouldn't necessarily help you as much to have a domain name with a bunch of keywords in it. - Matt Cutts
here: http://www.seobook.com/googles-matt-cutts-talks-down-keyword-domain-names
And Aaron's comment on that:
QuoteI also agree with the advantage of EMDs being overstated, especially when you consider the disadvantage of being boxed in on a set word and theme...this is doubly true for niche 3-word type EMDs that are hard to later pivot into broader entities. But I don't think Matt is talking about whacking hyphenated multi-word domains and such, simply because those hyphenated names don't really get exact match bonus (at least not in the US market & most major markets, though they are more commonly used in German-speaking markets, so at some point Google could test allowing some weight on those in Germany).
Don't know this Rob May, but clamis to have done tests and says
QuoteI have done several tests with regards to this, building test sites that are exact vs non-exact match domains based on market research. The exact match always (90%) of the time, beat out the other versions.
All my hyphenated domains tests have always taken longer (ave 44% longer) to start ranking, gathering rankings based on KW research than the non-hyphenated counterpart.-
-- lost that reference - an SEOMoz thread somewhere.