Do hyphens in domain names indicate search engine spamming?

[Head Boy]

I've just been reading this interesting thread on Search Engine Watch which made me think about the use of hyphens.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...?threadid=8483

[Geeman]

nice thread!

I prefer this:

But does it really matter? I'd never go back to keyword-keyword-keyword.com when I can have brand.com.

[Baldbastard]

I hate hypen domains and prefer small two word domains of which there are billions of good ones avaliable.

brand.com is fine as long as you have the budget to " brand " online you would be looking at millions to do this, or a lot of time

[Head Boy]

I have a weakness for what I call 3x2s - even www.buyany.com qualifies as one.

[slaxxx]

I don't think it really indicates spamming, sure a spammer may be more likely to use it but there are tons of legit hyphenated domains.

But yeah, ideally two word .com's with no hyphens for typeins and resale value.

[Blinky]

There are cool-names.com and there are keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.info names.

There's an obvious spammer and what is usual a decent site.

[Kamilla]

I have a few hyphen domains. But only because I ran out of ideas when trying to find a good name that was available lol

[ultrasking]

good thread and link ... I have a few domains with hypen in as ones without were sold before I could buy them. Anyway I think that yagoo and msn dont care too much about hypens as I am ranked on the first spot on those domains while I dont have luck with hypens on google. My best google websites are ones that I dont care about lol example ones where I submit my galleries from .. wierd

[gothic]

I don't know much about actual ranking of the domains, for I'm not a WM for long yet but it seems the SE's sure have no problems with hyphens in foldernames, filenames,...
My "solid" names have higher PR atm but that's not a good reference as the other one is the youngest...
Google images is crazy about one of my pages where all pics are named keyword-keyword-number.jpg... and in folders with hyphens too.

[tigermom]

I actually prefer hyphenated two words. My reason is SEO, but not the one mentioned on that thread. I don't think SE's place much emphasis on the keywords in the url. But... they do care what anchor text is being used. And with hyphenated domains, you're pretty sure to have and keywords clearly in the link, even someone uses the URL as the anchor text, like so many people do.

[Toker]

[quote=Head Boy]I've just been reading this interesting thread on Search Engine Watch which made me think about the use of hyphens.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...?threadid=8483[
/QUOTE]

1 hyphen doesn't hurt, in fact it's better in certain domains as it shows both words better and SE's pick up both.
People would see ask-tech.com faster than asktech.com or
webbs.com wouldn't be Web Bullshit like web-bs.com would.
Words with 2 or more hyphens tho I don't like..