Admin Talk has one but I can't think of another site I frequent that has one. Even when I was looking for a domain name for a recent project I ended up going with a name twice as long as I needed just to avoid a hyphen. What is your opinion on this? Irrational phobia or sound logical decision?
This is an interesting read, although, I'm not sure I agree with all of it: http://badfactor.com/choosing-a-domain-name-dashes-or-no-dashes/ And this is also a good read with some interesting points: http://searchengineland.com/9-seo-quirks-you-should-be-aware-of-146465
MustangEvolution.com used to be Mustang-Forums.com. I changed the name because I hated stressing the hypen when mentioning the site to people at car shows.
I have a couple of forums on hyphenated domains. I can't say they have caused me any issues but it's not what I would have chosen in an ideal world.
I voted no because my very first domain extreme-vb.net had a hyphen in it. It was the number 1 site for visual basic programmers for good long while until I closed a couple years ago. My second domain, resource-zone.com, was also hyphenated. Those articles were a good read. I have had hyphenated domains and other than the 2 above I have always went for the non-hyphenated variety. In fact until I bought this site I haven't purchased any sites with hyphens in them.
Probably because telling people 'hyphen' in a domain name (in real life/voice chat conversations doesn't work so well). Heck, some people I know probably wouldn't know what a hyphen is, so I'd have to say '[name][that dash like thing][name]' instead.
Simple. Try telling someone the name of this forum: We call it Admin Talk. Tell your friends to go to AdminTalk.com (at least that's how you say it). We think within the alphabet. Now you have to say Admin dash talk.com. A bit of a pain when you have to explain it. Easy to forget and such.
True but how often have I shared a domain name verbally over the years? As a percentage of ones I've shared via links/email/facebook/etc... it's tiny, Arguably verbalizing the dash makes it more memorable.
I bought http://admintalk.org. Will we change to it? I don't know. I still have a lot I want to do before I even get to the point of considering a domain change. Domain changes aren't as bad as they once were. The search engines pick up on proper 301 redirects rather quickly.
I also voted no. One of my first more successful projects was called Entertainment Avenue (and later Entertainment Hub) and that was hyphenated as I personally felt it was too much of a mouthful having it together and looked nicer with it included. As far as I can tell, "content is king" and if your content on the hyphenated domain is better than non-hyphenated, then your site should rank higher, it just can become a pain mentioning it...
