Hello,
Will google ignore hypens in these domain names:
Basically, will these sites rank for search terms USA and UK?
Matt.
Everything I’ve read indicates the big SEs count hyphens as spaces, so U-S-A would be U S A not USA. I’ve also read that they look down on multiple hyphens as they think you’re trying to keyword stuff.
Personally, even if it DOES rank better (which I don’t think it will), I don’t think you’ll get enough benefit to risk annoying your potential customers.
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There are some sensible contentions against the utilization of hyphenated domains. However, I’m not mindful of any proof that Google or other web search engines penalize you for utilizing them.
as far as i see it they are close phrases so they will be found for the keywords you want.
That would depend almost entirely upon the content of the pages. If your site is about the USA, or the UK, then it will rank for those terms (irrespective of the domain name). If your site is not about the term, then it will not rank.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, search engines try to return results which give information matching the search term, so they are looking primarily at the content of the page, not the URL.
Basically hyphens are well accepted in domains and URLs, it is considered space, what you should not use is underscores.
Hi
I am not sure it will rank or not but it is not good practice.
Welcome to the forums, @ssplpune.
Based on what? Hyphens are allowed characters in domain names, so it’s hard to see on what basis it could be considered “not good practice”.
Obviously you feel strongly about this, or you wouldn’t have reopened an old topic, so it would be helpful if you went into more detail.
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