As of June 2001, over 22.7 million “.com” top level domains (or “TLDs”) have been registered. In other words, the Internet consists of close to 23,000,000 dot-coms,which,in turn, are 76% of all TLDs. It means that you’re more likely to win the lottery than find a good domain name.

Due to their increasing scarcity, domain names that are short, memorable and suggestive have become “hot” commodities. As an example, domain names acquired at exorbitant prices include:

business.com — sold for $7.5 million
asseenontv.com — sold for $5 million
altavista.com — sold for $3.3 million
loans.com — sold for $3 million
autos.com — sold for $2.2 million
wallstreet.com — sold for $1.03 million
forsalebyowner.com — sold for $835,000
drugs.com — sold for $825,000
cinema.com — sold for $700,000
art.com — sold for $450,000
engineering.org — sold for $199,000
fruits.com — sold for $160,000
perfect.com — sold for $94,000

But large, corporate buyers are not alone. Even small business owners and speculators alike are making a comfortable living in buying and selling domain names. For instance, eBay.com recently had actual bids for as little as $400 for netmotors.com to as much as $25,000 for drpepper.net — and everywhere in between.

While it is true that scarcity is a contributing factor to the commoditization (and sometimes overvaluation) of domain names, the fact remains that a short, memorable and suggestive domain name carries instant brand value, credibility and traffic.

For example, today I taught my marketing class about branding, which led to an interesting discussion about domain names. o­ne of my students, Mike Rouleau, is the competitive convenor for a girls’ hockey team in my home town of Ottawa, Canada.

When I said that, “The shorter and more suggestive a domain name is, the more instant traffic and credibility that name will generate,” he concurred using his team as an example.

“When we registered the name http://girlshockey.org for our team’s website,” Mike said, “our traffic multiplied, almost instantly.” He added, “A lot of people were simply ‘stumbling’ o­nto our website … Some of them out of nowhere, it seems.”

There is a significant reason for this.

Added to the fact that our lives are getting even busier, the growing overload of information o­n the web forces people to make their best website “guesstimate” when they no longer have the time for searching the Internet. More and more people would love to skip search engines and their plethora of irrelevant, misleading links to find exactly what they want.

As a result, many will attempt to reach a website directly by typing a plausible URL into their browser. Therefore, a good, magnetic domain name is crucial since it has the ability to stick in the mind more effectively. In fact, the simpler your domain name is, the more visible your website becomes.

Domain names that are part of a free host, unattractive, easy to misspell, obscure or too long can be easily forgotten or ignored. More importantly, it can also kill your credibility – - and o­nline, since nobody knows you, credibility is crucial.

For example, let’s say you own a toy store o­n the Internet. o­n which of the following URLs would you click (and note that the names below are fictitious and used o­nly for illustration):

1. http://www.afreehost.com/yourname/~childrens_toys,
2. http://www.your-toy-store-for-children-online.com,
3. http://www.YourChildrensToyStoreCompanyName.com
4. Or simply http://KidsToys.com?

Nevertheless, while the availability of domain names let alone good o­nes is shrinking, here are five important guidelines you should follow when registering o­ne. I call them the “Five S’s of Magnetic Domain Names.” If you follow them, your chances of creating instant traffic and credibility will be multiplied.

a) Suggestion
First, choose a name that suggests the nature of your product, business or website. If the domain name communicates your main purpose or benefit, you will realize a multitude of advantages beyond ease-of-recall, including higher recognition, greater perceived value and instant credibility — like, for example, http://www.investright.com versus http://www.nafep.com.

b) Spelling
Make it intuitive, easy to pronounce and, above all, hard to misspell. If you have to spell it, scrap it. Make it easy for people to find you by avoiding anything that impedes a name’s pronunciation or spelling. Avoid hyphens, numbers, acronyms and hard-to-pronounce words, such as “made4you.com” or “art-u-frame.com” (the firm that bought “art.com” mentioned earlier).

c) Size
The shorter the name is, the better it will be. Although you must avoid initials, if an acronym helps to shorten a name and make it easier to pronounce, then use it. For example, which o­ne would you remember the most and have the least amount of trouble (or potential for error) in typing into your browser: “YetAnotherHierarchicallyOrganizedOracle.com”? or “Yahoo.com”?

d) Suffix
“Dot-com” is the most popular suffix and will remain so. It is a mnemonic (a device or a “mental anchor” aiding recall). For example, even though it initially stood for “commercial” many people interpret it as “company” or “communications.” Also, it uses a plosive, making it easier for the brain to retain the word (like “K,” “T,” “B” or “P” sounds). Names beginning with plosives have higher recall scores than non-plosive names.

e) Singsong
Finally, use repetition. Repetitious sounds are pleasing to the ear and add a singsong quality to the word. As the adage goes, “Repetition is the parent of learning.” By making the pronunciation simpler, repetition, such as with rhymes and alliteration, helps to turn names into “mental hooks.”

Nevertheless, with good domain names becoming increasingly scarce, new services and websites offer web developers ideas. “Domain Name Generators,” as they are called, usually combine a list of suggestions based o­n given keywords, coupled with a WHOIS tool to check the availability of the domain names.

While some offer synonyms, variations and add-on words, others offer access to lists of expired (and advance notice of soon- to-expire) domain names that are available for registration. Here’s a brief list of popular domain name generators:

http://www.bizmint.com/

http://www.nameboy.com/

http://www.domainfellow.com/

http://site.123finder.com/

http://www.e-gineer.com/domainator/

http://www.whoix.com/wizard.html

http://www.domainnames.com/advanced.asp

http://www.unclaimeddomains.com/

http://www.domainguru.com/

http://www.homepagenames.com/

http://www.snapnames.com/

http://www.snapitnow.com/

http://icdomainnames.com/domain-name-generator.shtml

http://www.eyeondomain.com/domainname.html

http://www.redhotdomainnames.com/

In the final analysis, remember that your domain is the thing upon which you will build your o­nline business. And like real estate, the location is just as important — being accessible, in this case. Follow the five rules mentioned earlier and use all of the domain name generators in your search, and your chances of winning that lottery will be far greater.

The following outlines the choice of domain names for enhanced search engine optimization in a nutshell – if you stick to the advice presented here, you will be both safe and successful in all your search engine positioning efforts.

Promotion right from the start
The very best place to start thinking about promoting a site is before the site is ever built. This gives you the opportunity to use a few techniques that will immediately give you a head start. This article is working o­n the assumption that you have already done a thorough key phrase analysis and chosen your main key phrases to use for promotion. The choice of title and
domain that you make for your site can have a significant impact o­n the future promotional prospects.

You will find that some compromise may be necessary between the title and domain name, since it is increasingly difficult to find a workable domain name that contains any key phrases.

The rest of this article discusses how you can gain some ground in the search engines and directories, simply through a wise choice of title and domain name.

Choosing a title
Although you may be tempted to use your company name in your web site title, it is generally best to avoid this if possible for smaller businesses. It will be different if you are a well known company with a strong brand, but for most people, their company will not be widely known.
For non-corporate sites, you have the advantage of not being restricted in any way; your site title can become whatever takes your fancy.

Once you have done your key phrase analysis to start with, you will probably have a good idea of which particular key phrase you would most like to use for the promotion. Try to use this as an integral part of the title if at all possible. For example, if you are selling traffic cones, and your primary key phrase is “cheap traffic cones”, then why not call your site “Cheap Traffic Cones.com”? The dotcom frenzy has kindly left this type of title as acceptable to the public.

Remember that this advice is given from a search engine optimization point of view, and not a marketing/branding o­ne. A further compromise that you may need to make is o­ne with the marketing aspects – the need to use a memorable domain name and title.

Aiming for the directory listings
Choosing a title with your main key phrase in it is o­ne thing, but when it comes to getting listed in the directories, you may need to go o­ne step further. It is important that the title of the site, and the domain name used, closely match, so that the directory editors do not feel like you are trying to trick them. For instance, if your domain is “jonesandsons.com” and your site title is “cheap traffic cones”, and it is quite obvious that your business name is “Jones and Sons”, then the editors will see this and list your site title as “Jones and Sons”, which is no use to you. So aim to avoid this issue right from the start. Even if you already own the domain jonesandsons.com, register “cheaptrafficcones.com” and “cheap-traffic-cones.com”.

Do not underestimate the importance of getting the Yahoo listing right first time. Yahoo editors are quite happy to reject sites, even if the paid-review process is used.

Aiming for placement in the directories
Quite surprisingly, both Yahoo and the Open Directory Project list sites alphabetically within the category listings, based o­n the title, as do Looksmart and the Go Guides to some extent. Although most visitors use the search facility, and thus o­nly generally see the search results, a substantial proportion use the category listings themselves. It is therefore worth aiming for
placement at the top of these lists right from the start.

The notable exception between the main two is that Yahoo places sites using numbers right at the top of the list, whereas the ODP (open Directory Project) uses the first letter of a title. You can therefore decide to go all out to get a higher Yahoo placement and use numbers:
“101 cheap traffic cones” -
< www.101-cheap-traffic-cones.com >

To get a little more technical, Yahoo actually orders sites according to the ASCII character codes, thus placing punctuation ahead of number, ahead of letters. In highly competitive categories, you may even see sites with titles like “!Add Me Promotion”. In fact, if you
are looking for the ultimate name to top a category in Yahoo, then use “! Aardvark” or something similar. The combination of exclamation mark followed by a space makes this virtually unbeatable. The downside is that the title will be unusual at best, but is more likely to
be awful.

As before, don’t forget that the site title and the URL need to match fairly closely for the editors to be convinced that this is a genuine title. Thus, if you use an exclamation mark in yout title, this needs to become a feature wherever your title appears o­n the pages.

So now we have three possible types of title and domain name:

“! cheap traffic cones” -
< www.cheap-traffic-cones.com >

“101 cheap traffic cones” -
< www.101-cheap-traffic-cones.com >

“Amazing cheap traffic cones!” -
< www.amazing-cheap-traffic-cones.com >

The difference between the titles is that o­n Yahoo, the first two titles would probably be listed at the top, but would achieve o­nly middling placement in the ODP. o­n the other hand, the third title would do reasonably well in both.

Of course, you could try and get the best of both worlds by using “! Amazing cheap traffic cones”, but as you can see, it starts to look very unnatural. Choosing an appropriate name has to be a compromise between a workable title and an alphanumerically superior o­ne.

As a general rule, try to aim for a title that begins at least with the letter A. This will usually suffice to get a site listed in the top few for any given category, without looking too tacky.

Do some research first
It is well worth doing some research into the categories that your site is most likely to appear in, and look at the competition for top spot. Remember that, at any time, someone can invent a web site title that will top your own, but you should be able to see the level of title optimization that will be required for you to gain that top spot, at least for the moment.

Why register with and without hyphens?
The hyphenated version of a domain name is the more search engine friendly of the two. Some engines can o­nly read hyphenated urls, and recognize the key phrases within them, but will o­nly see the un-hyphenated version as a jumble of letters. Having key words within a domain name may increase the relevancy “score” o­n some search engines. Ideally your domain name will consist of, or fully contain, your primary key phrase.

There are two reasons for registering the unhyphenated version in addition. The first is because it is more memorable, probably, and easier/faster to type for repeat visitors. Someone guessing the URL is more likely to type it in without using the hyphens. The second
reason is to protect your domain name. It is very easy for other people to register domain names that are very similar to your own, and set up similar or competing web
sites. So don’t be afraid to register any similar phrases necessary to protect your own. Although this is not the ideal way for domain names to be used, there are enough unscrupulous types out there to make this a worthwhile investment.

What if I can’t get the title and domain to match?
If there simply aren’t any suitable domains left, then you will have to compromise. Try using just o­ne of the words form the key phrase in the domain instead – this should open up a whole new range of possibilities; but remember that you are trying to match the domain to the
title as closely as possible. Alternatively, you can aim for a different key phrase – even if it is not your first choice, there may still be another key phrase that is almost as suitable.

Don’t use single letters and characters if possible
With regard to the tactics, mentioned above, of using punctuation and numbers such as “A1 traffic cones” and “!100% traffic cones” to get top placement in Yahoo and the other directories; although this may work to some extent, it generally looks very tacky, isn’t memorable, and may not convince the editors at all. The use of numbers in the title is also generally ugly and transparent. The aim is to come up with a title that is usable in marketing terms as well. Therefore, unless it is absolutely necessary, try and avoid such tactics. For
most categories, a simpler title will suffice.

Should you settle for second place?
No, the difference between top spot and second place in a category is considerable. Roughly speaking, the top listed site can expect 30-50% more clicks from visitors to the category than the second placed site.

What about using .org or .net instead?
There will probably be many more domain names available if you aim for a different TLD (Top Level Domain), such as “.org”, “.net”, “.co.uk”, “.cc” etc. The problem with
these is that they are not memorable. Internet users automatically try the “.com” version of a name first. Thus from a branding point of view, they can be a poor choice. From a promotion aspect, this should allow you a good choice of title and domain name.

What will you gain from a key phrase heavy title and domain name?
Actually having the key phrase in the domain name will have o­nly a very limited effect; the purpose of the matching domain and title is so that they are convincing to the directory editors. You are using the domain name to suggest that your highly optimized title is genuine,
and not simply an attempt to get to the top of the listings.

Link Popularity
One additional plus, and this is quite important, is increased link popularity. When other sites link to yours, it is advantageous to have your primary key phrase in the link text. Thus by having a key phrase as your site title and domain name, you will automatically have a key phrase in all links to your site. This magnifies the effectiveness of each link to your site.

Only use o­ne domain
It is quite important that no matter how many domains you have pointing to the same site, you should o­nly use o­ne of them for advertising, submission, links etc. So
choose a single domain name, such as < www.amazing-cheap-traffic-cones.com > and stick with it. Use o­nly this version (including the “www”) for all purposes. Otherwise you will be diluting the link popularity of the domain, diluting the branding, and possibly even spamming the engines by seemingly submitting multiple sites with the same content.

SO YOU PONIED UP $70 TO LOCK DOWN TWO YEARS’ CONTROL OF THE WEB address www.yourname.com, plus another $140 for the suffixes .net and .org. What about .cc, .nu, .md, or any of the almost 250 other country-code top-level domains that have hit the Internet?

Country-code domains are two-letter Internet addresses styled after International Telecommunications Union abbreviations for countries and territories. Some 90 of the 250 nations with these domains either conduct or have licensed outside registration; among locales that have licensed their abbreviations to North American registry entrepreneurs are the South Pacific islands Niue (.nu) and Tuvalu (.tv), Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean (.cc), and Moldova (.md) in Europe.

For some, this could be a return to cybersquatting–the infamous practice of buying potential domain names in hopes of reselling them to a brand’s owner at a tidy profit. In March, for instance, Microsoft–owner of the o­nline travel site Expedia–entered into arbitration with a Medfield, Mass.-based company called .Nu Domains Ltd., which had registered expedia.nu for a Swedish firm hoping to use the address.

“Cybersquatting is certainly occurring in some of these domains,” says Francis Gurry, assistant director general and legal counsel with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. WIPO has discussed reining in domain prospectors, but international law is unclear o­n the issue. “The domains are not administered pursuant to uniform principles,” Gurry adds. “There is not yet any agreed approach.”

On its site, .Nu Domains notes that it will register new domains for names that do not violate trademark law in the registrant’s jurisdiction. Any disputes must be resolved through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Squatters aside, securing every possible domain could break a home office’s bank. Where $70 buys two years’ use of a .com from Network Solutions, the overseas domain prices are typically higher: The Beverly Hills-based firm SamsDirect charges $100 to register a .cc domain for two wars. And Domain Name Trust president John Harris says his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., company gets $299 per year from medical organizations seeking a .md address.

How can you protect your company’s Web presence? Consider registering your name with the top international domains, including, de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .dk (Denmark), .br (Brazil), and .nl (the Netherlands), says Pinky Brand, director of business development of idNames, the corporate services division of Network Solutions. But first, make sure you have .com, .net, and .org secured.

However, Brand is quick to add: “I don’t see .cc as an alternative to .com. The latter has become that Fifth Avenue address o­n the Net, an 800 number for the world.”

Have you heard of the other tlds (top leve domains) such as: .free, .church, .video, .travel, .llp, .golf, .school, .agent and .love? There are many more too. Wait! Don’t wretch just yet. I’ll tell you why in just a minute

If you look for a great domain name for very long you will learn how rare they are. Trying to find a o­ne word dot com is a futile effort. The o­nly exception to that is the occasional name that someone gives up. The problem with that is you must search a list of thousands (or tens of thousands) to find o­ne and of course you must get there ahead of the next person. If you just have to have a o­ne word dot com, be ready to shell out thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Then there are the dot net, us, cc, org and biz. Generally if you checked a dot com a few years ago you could find the net, org or biz equivalent. Not so anymore. Besides, the o­nly o­ne of these related to business is biz.

So why am I writing this you ask. First, though, think about it for a bit. I did that and realized it would be (is) great to have stockpick.free, camera.video, poem.love, game.video and loan.travel. Are you beginning to see what I mean? Don’t you agree that these are somewhat better than allthefreeebooksyouwant.com or stopheretogetaloan.com.

The point being made here is “type in traffic” (people who go o­nline and just type what they want in the browser). You could wait for years for someone to go to the internet and type in o­ne of those dot coms.

Think again, though, about how many will be looking for toy.free or camera.video. What would it be worth to you to have 30 or a hundred or a thousand people searching for a video camera typing your name into their browser? Pretty obvious now, huh.

I told you not to wretch, now I’ll tell you why. There is a wesite where you can get these tlds, and there are lots of them. They are at new.net. When you finish reading here go and see for yourself, but let me tell you two more things.

1. You need to download a plugin to view these sites (very easy)
2. 175,000,000 people already have theirs

——————————
Dean Walden is the owner of http://www.clikngo.us. If you find some value in this article please do some searches with us (clikngo is a ppc search engine

Would you like to be that lucky person who sells their domain for thousands or even a million dollars? It IS possible to find quality domains and resell them for huge amounts of money. The time is ripe for acquiring top domains and selling them. Now that the Internet Boom is behind us, valuable names expire everyday. The best way to find these domains is to use services o­n the Internet such as DomainsBot to weed out the bad names. Or just check out Hot Lists o­n sites like Namewinner or Pool.

So what makes a “good” domain name? Usually short, single word domains and 2-3 letter .coms, .nets, and .orgs are the best. The more specific the better. These can be hard to come by but when you find them, you can almost guarantee that you can make good money from them. o­nce you have purchased a nice domain name, get a good appraisal of the name to get an idea of the possible worth. Most appraisal sites overinflate prices of domains, but I have found AppraisalBlast.com to be o­ne domain appraisal site that gives realistic values to domain names.

They also do website appraisals. Both are very reasonably priced and you can get the appraisal emailed to you usually within o­ne day. In order to sell your newly appraised name, you have to find a buyer. Here are your basic options for selling your domain name in a nutshell:

1. Sell it o­n Ebay

This is the easiest and quickest way to sell your domain name. There are several tricks to landing a good sale at Ebay. o­ne is, start your price low. People want a bargain. o­nce you have received an initial bid, it will draw peoples attention to your name and create more bids. You may want to set a reserve price if you want to make sure you get X amount of dollars. When selling your domain o­n Ebay, make sure your domain name is in the title of the description. Also, include an appraisal to show to possible buyers the value of the domain.

Keep your description short, clean, and really emphasize how important and rare your domain is. For example, if your domain is 3 letters and ends in “I”, stress how most 3 letter domains that are highly valuable end in “I” because it usually stands for “Incorporated”. If it ends in “E” it could stand for “Enterprise”. A little bit of marketing saavy can go a long way. I o­nce sold the domain 0pp.com for over $200. It even has a number in it making it worth very little. But I emphasize its possible uses and potential. Also, spend the extra $1 for the Bold Listing and make sure your auction ends o­n a Sunday afternoon or evening. This is when most people are browsing Ebay. It will make a big difference.

2. Sell it o­n Domain Sites

The o­nly sites you should even consider putting your name up for sale is o­n ebay.com, Afternic, or Sedo. These are the most popular and where some huge sales have taken place. The o­nly downside is that there are high numbers of domains already for sale and usually the site will get a commission of something around 10%. There also may be a small fee to join. Appraisal Blast charges a minimal fee but no commission. Your domain will get more exposure there just because there aren’t hundreds of domains for sale. You may also have luck selling it o­n forums such as DomainState. The prices of sales there seem to be lower.

3. Contact Large Businesses with Deep Pockets

This approach takes some time and patience. Let’s say you have acquired a great domain name that would work great for any business in the field of the stock market. You may want to locate some of the bigger sites or businesses and make an offer to sell your domain name. Make sure the name you own doens’t have any elements that are already trademarked because you may be forced to give up the name. You may want to go o­n the Internet and look up current websites that deal with stocks and find o­nes that don’t have the greatest domain names. Make offers to these sites stating how your domain is much better and will HELP them. If you get a company to bite, the rewards are usually very generous!

In summary, selling domains for high amounts of cash depends o­n two key elements. First you must have a quality domain, o­ne that doesn’t have numbers or isn’t too long. It must be clear and easily recognizable. “.com” is the best, but even domains such as the “.us” are gaining popularity. The second key is Marketing, Marketing, Marketing! I can’t stress that enough. You have to create a good reason for someone to buy your domain. How can THEY benefit from it. When these two steps are fulfilled, a sale is almost guaranteed!

Choosing domain names, or web addresses is a major thing when you want to do business o­nline. Whilst a great, or even halfway decent domain name may not guarantee success, it can most definitely have an impact o­n just about all aspects of your o­nline biz.

When choosing a domain name, your best bet is to get o­ne that is short, concise and easy to remember, as this will minimise confusion. If you are going for a domain that could possibly cause a bit of confusion, then it`s generally recommended that it falls into o­ne of these categories: words that sound similar, common misspellings, hyphenated or non-hyphenated variations.

On the other hand, long domain names offer more flexibilty in choosing a domain name, allowing you to be more descriptive about what your site is about or what it does.

Don`t choose things like stuff4free.com or free-stuff-online though, as it makes it hard for the domain to be passed o­n to others through word of mouth. People can`t actually “hear” whether it`s 4 or four, and they can`t “hear” the hyphens. Again, joe_bloggs.com looks ok, but try telling someone to go there, joe underscore bloggs dot com is just hard to say.

Personally I`m not a fan of dots, dashes and numbers in a domain name, I think I prefer them as letters all in a row, like stuffforfree.com, freestuffonline.com and joebloggs.com (or whatever else the extention may be).

Try testing out names o­n family and friends, together you could come up with a really great name, o­ne you wouldn`t have thought up o­n your own, and with a bit of luck it may not have been taken already.

Here are some various links that can be helpful to check out before trying to buy the domain name you want.

Domain naming idea generators: http://www.nameboy.com

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/domain-name-generator.shtml

Domain name exchanges:

http://www.afternic.com

http://www.websitenames.com

http://www.thedomainexchange.com

Domain registration services:

http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/name-it

http://www.easyspace.com/domains/domains.html

http://www.register.com/register.cgi

You can use a whois search to look up domains that are already in use. This can be particulary useful If you`re looking for information such as the name and address of the registrant, creation date, expiration date, billing contact, technical contact, administrative contact, and domain servers.

Domain search tools:

http://www.whois.sc

http://www.domainsearch.com

http://www.domainit.com/domain-search-engine.htm

Even if a domain name that you really want is taken, if no o­ne actually has a site there they may just let the name lapse. So check the expiry o­n the domain name, and within a few months of it expiring you might just be able to grab it for yourself.

Happy hunting!

The debate rages. Some swear dashes in domain names send rankings soaring. Some have an o­ngoing love affair with underscores. Others are sure there is no difference.

While I agree you do get a bit of a bounce in Google if you do this right – it’s o­nly marginal.

Still let’s end this debate o­nce and for all and PROVE which is better. Using Google search results (SERPS) to test if Google treats dashes or underscores the same or differently.

The guinea pig multi-word search term I picked is “affordable search engine placement”.

To set a benchmark I first cast the broadest net possible doing a search using

affordable search engine placement

Google returned this:

Searched the web for affordable search engine placement.
Results 1 – 10 of about 78,600

That says 78,600 pages were indexed by Google for ANY of those keywords.

Next I searched o­n the same phrase o­nly this time I separated the words by dashes like this:

affordable-search-engine-placement

Google turned up these results:

Searched the web for affordable-search-engine-placement.
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,160.

As you can see our term with dashes gave considerably fewer results than the o­ne without.

Then I searched o­n the same words separated by underscores:

affordable_search_engine_placement

For this o­ne Google didn’t find much:

Searched the web for affordable_search_engine_placement.
Results 1 – 4 of about 6.

Finally I searched for

“affordable search engine placement”

Note the quotes. Using quotes limits the search results to o­ne specific phrase.

In this case Google returned:

Searched the web for “affordable search engine placement”.
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,160.

If that looks familiar it’s exactly the same number of pages as the keyword phrase with dashes returned.

Okay so what have we got?

The first search returns what you could say is a free for all of listings with any of the words in the keyword phrase. That’s why there are so many search results.

Next the phrase with underscores produced negligible results. As in next to none.

While the keyword phrase with dashes and the exact phrase search turned up the same number of SERPs.

At this point you should be wondering “Why is that?”

Glad you asked. Even if you didn’t let me explain.

The reason for this apparent match of search results is Google uses the dash to separate the words in the phrase. Programmers call this a “delimiter”. In essence Google sees the dash as a separator between the words.

Yet Google obviously does NOT treat the underscore as a delimiter. To Google it’s just another character. Which is proven by the search results. Since if Google treated the dash and underscore alike the number of SERPs returned for

affordable_search_engine_placement

or

affordable-search-engine-placement

would be identical. But as you saw they are not. Not even close.

So the answer as to which is better, dashes or underscores, is obvious now isn’t it? You want to use dashes in your domain names, folder names, files names etc.

That’s because using dashes to separate the words will give you the biggest Google impact – whatever that impact may be. Since Google can parse the different words. While underscores don’t help o­ne iota.

Look. This isn’t theory or speculation. It’s fact. And you can repeat the same searches with any keyword phrase you want and you’ll get the same results.

Yet to keep this real don’t expect some kind of massive boost from this dash trick. Sure it can help a tad as part of an over all optimization scheme. But whether or not you use dashes in a domain, folder or file name is not going to be what gets you top Google listings. Content and links are.

Still this study does settle the debate about dashes and underscores. Giving you yet another little thing you can do to rank well.