Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:35 am Post subject: Google and hyphens in domain name
If there is a previous heading for this, I apologise but couldn't find it. I am responding to Alan's latest newsletter saying not to worry about hyphens in domain names. Hmn, the proof possibly is in the pudding. Having received an email from someone else a few days ago saying that his sites with hyphens had indeed gone way down in Google, I went to check my site which had been on the bottom of the first page for months, if not longer. (I had not checked it for 18 months or so till this summer - but had then checked several times and it remained on first page!)I noticed it had moved to the second page. However, on receiving Alan's email today I decided to check again and it is nowhere to be seen. For as many pages as I could be bothered to look at it was not there. The only other difference is that I have in the past two weeks changed web host and they have apparently had a lot of down time, so I guess it could be that - (am changing hosts again). However, there is nothing, absolutely nothing in the least bit spammy on my site, so I am left thinking it may be the hyphens after all, which would be sooo unfair as when I started this site three years ago, with site build it I remember being told there was nothing wrong with hyphens, and simply put them in thinking it would be easier to read the domain name. So have other people with hyphens found that, yes, there sites have gone down or disappeared on google and, if this is the problems, what are we supposed to do about it - buy a new domain name until the search engines change their mind next time?
Thank you for your reply Wally. Well, I have changed absolutely nothing on my site in the last week, apart from 2 things. One, I have taken some very long pages (over 1000 words) and made them into multiple pages (2 or 3 depending on size) and as I said I have changed host. Now, I understand from other people there (they have a forum) that there has been an enormous amout of downtime while I have been there - several times sites have been unavailable - including one time of, I think it was 7 or 8 hours, so I wondered if that could be the reason. I'm not happy with that host for several reasons and so am leaving, but I am still concerned to know why. As I said previously, I use nothing, absolutely nothing which could be considered spam - no doorway, no blog and pinging, no phoney pages and although I do have around 7 pages which were originally bought as private label, they have been so changed, that I do not think that would count - and I mean totally re written simply using the private label as a very rough draft, rather than just adding a bit at the top and bottom. I put in a search for the name of my site yesterday and had no problem with google coming up with it, so it clearly is still indexed somehow, but it still seems very strange that my main keyword should have suddenly had such an enormous change. So do you think it was the downtime of my new host? Could the spiders have come when it was down and this is the reason? Has anyone else noticed any problems?
I forgot to say, that in the scenereo I heard about Google and hyphens, it was going to allow 1 hyphen in the domain name. Now do you have more than one hyphen in your name Wally? I just checked the first ten pages of Google for my top keyword and noticed none of them had more than one hyphen - but who knows maybe I am very unusual in having more than one? still concerned that I may need to change my site name!?
alethea
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:24 am Post subject: Yes Dashes Seem to be DEADLY!
Alethea
Sorry to hear about your sudden drop in Google rankings.
I believe you?re referring to Andy Williams newsletter. And I have a lot of respect for him. When he speaks I listen. When long established, quality sites like his are dropping like flies there?s a reason. Which he laid out logically.
Now when Colin McDugal first mentioned this was coming back in December, like most, I pooh poohed it. In fact I jokingly emailed Andy that he better watch out. Alas it?s no joke. Since like you said, the proof IS in the pudding.
I?ve talked with a couple of people this week about the same thing. One reported her dashed domain name disappeared overnight too. Costing her 70% of her income. Another reported something similar just yesterday. Like you neither did anything to precipitate the drop.
Myself, I?ve got nearly 25 dashed domain sites. I?m moving the content for ALL of them to new domains. Such a task is not one to be taken lightly. But I believe the evidence that Google is penalizing sites with dashed domains.
Like you did, I looked at 50 keywords. In Google I only found 1.8% of the top 50 listings for those 50 keywords had dashed domains. That?s a tiny number.
Yes I understand many will tell you this penalty doesn?t exist. But like Andy, it?s the only thing I can find that accounts for the drop in my rankings too.
Thanks for the reply John. For financial reasons, I would need to create an addon new domain where the disappeared site is the main domain. Now I could delete all the files from there and move them to the new domain with a link from the disappeared one ....but might Google then get upset as it would appear to be a copy of the before domain - oh yes, and of course you would need to get all your links change too - what a nighmare!!
If this is a deliberate change - it seems so offff!!
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:14 pm Post subject: My Game Plan
Alethea
You pointed out...
... what a nighmare!!
COMMENT: Yes this IS a nightmare.
but might Google then get upset as it would
appear to be a copy of the before domain
COMMENT: You are right to suspect Google won?t like finding duplicate content.
So for sites that I?m getting decent MSN/Yahoo traffic I?m tweaking the robots.txt file to keep the googlebot away. This will result in the pages falling out of Google?s SERPs eventually. Given the number of sites I?m dealing with I?ve got time to wait for that to happen.
It also lets you leave the links in place. Then just go for replacements to the new site.
In other cases, where I don't care to wait, I?m editing the content and checking it in copyscape so it won?t appear to be duplicate to Google.
Also?
When I put up the new site, it?s on a host time zones away from the first one. So they can no way be construed to be owned by the same person.
BTW, for sites I don?t have decent traffic built up yet, I do just kill the domain name and reload.
When we depend on free traffic from the search engines then we have to roll with the punches. Painful as that may be sometimes.
Hopefully you've got other ways to get traffic in place. Or a list of prospects you can email to that will help you get over this hump.
It sounds to me like:
"if '-'==1 than OK else remove from Google results"
But this doesn't make any sense. What is the reason to add this line of code to the Google algorithm, and what is the reason to add it now, not at the begging of Google? Adding hyphens to the domain name is not a spam and does not indicate less value of the content of the website.
But discussing this issue into many SEO forums and Newsletters can bring a lot of popularity and traffic.
That's what I am thinking and hope will be right _________________ Ivan
Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:54 pm Post subject: Make Sense?
ivantk wrote:
But this doesn't make any sense.
LOL Compared to what? No more monthly update. No more monthly PR update. No more links:URL showing who links to a site. I could go on and on with the ?what once was but is no more? in Google. Not to forget the no more $471 a share price?
ivantk wrote:
What is the reason to add this line of code to the Google algorithm, and what is the reason to add it now, not at the begging of Google?
I use a term called ?accidental optimization?. No more blatant keyword density games. Linking games. Keyword stuffing. You want to still optimize but so it looks almost accidental. Working in synonyms and other related terms to make it easy for the Google algo to determine what the page is about. Without repeating the focus keyword mindlessly.
Then too might it not be a process of algo evolution. AND computing power increase?
ivantk wrote:
Adding hyphens to the domain name is not a spam and does not indicate less value of the content of the website.
You?re right. But who said anything about spam? If it was spam such sites would be booted and perhaps show PR 0. Dashed domains are something that triggers a filter of some sort maybe. So instead of extra credit you get lesser credit. Which seems to affect your ranking.
Hyphens in the domain name is for easy reading when the visitors looking at the search results, and easy determining the website topic from the search engines
But Google is doing a lot of things that makes them worse instead of better, not only from the webmaster view point but I am saying this as a user. So we only have to wait to see how things will go on.
But if SEOs used to teaching us to use hyphens in the domain name, no one said that cheap-viagra-is-free-in-my-store-for-sale is a good idea _________________ Ivan
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5815 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:19 am Post subject:
I own a website which has three hyphens in the domain name - dj-tips-and-tricks.com. Today it's not only No.1 in Google for "dj tips" it's also No.2 for the same phrase, beating sites which don't have hyphens and beating sites which have only one hyphen in the domain name.
It's very easy to see a site change ranking in search engines and jump to the conclusion that one particular factor was the cause.
Surely, if Andy's site was clobbered because of its hyphens, mine would have been also? Because my site hasn't been hit, then there must be another reason his was hit.
I think the wise thing to do is to wait and watch - while keeping on getting good quality links to your site and adding useful, unique content. _________________ Allan Gardyne
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Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1838 Location: Columbus, OH
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:59 pm Post subject:
I have a site that has 4 dashes in the domain now that just got a nice boost in the search results around the Google BigDaddy update. It's snake oil saying dashes play that big of an issue as some of these "gurus" are saying. Your quality of content and quality of inbound links are going to play a role 100 times more in terms of ranking your site than dashes in the domain name or not. _________________ Robert
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It's very easy to see a site change ranking in search engines and jump to the conclusion that one particular factor was the cause.
Bang on there. It's very difficult indeed to isolate other factors, but in this case...
alethea wrote:
The only other difference is that I have in the past two weeks changed web host and they have apparently had a lot of down time, so I guess it could be that - (am changing hosts again).
You mention that almost in passing, but I'd bet this is the reason.
In this case, I'd leave it a little while before you start changing domains.
Cheers,
Charlie.
P.S. I too have domains with dashes - including several with two dashes together between just two words. I haven't noticed any pattern of changes to these, either. _________________ "Before I speak, I have something important to say."
- Groucho Marx
Which is the exact point I tried to make earlier before the first poster got silly and resorted to name calling. All my multi hypen sites are doing just fine.... I guess its bad karma that their site got deservedly dropped.
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