

Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? - rhygar

How bad is it to use a hyphenated domain name for a startup? I.e. what if foursquare.com was four-square.com.<p>Would this significantly reduce the value of my site?
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Mithrandir
I'd say bad. When you tell someone about your site, you have to say "your dash
site dot com", which is not only longer but also harder to remember. (This is
similar to the GNU/Linux debate in some respects.)

If you buy "your-site.com" to protect "yoursite.com", which you already own,
then it's worth it.

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byoung2
Good point...how would you quickly tell someone to visit www.slash-dot.com? Or
www.50-yard-dash.com. For that last one, I'd hate to have to always say "50
[as in the number five zero] dash [the symbol] yard dash [the symbol] dash
[the word] dot com"

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spooneybarger
i find the - more pleasing but after having this conversation w/ many many
people over the years, i am obviously in the minority. most people i know
would assume that your non-dash name was taken and you were desperate to get
some name in that variety. take from that what you will.

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byoung2
The - can help eliminate some confusion www.pen-island.com would be more clear
for a ballpoint pen website than www.penisland.com, which has another
interpretation. The same goes for a site like www.sales-exchange.com vs
www.salesexchange.com which might be confused as "sale sex change".

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cmontgomeryb
I always liked the example of expertsexchange.com. These are the only
situations in which I would prefer I hyphenated domain, though I'd rather
rethink the domain entirely as Expert Exchange ALWAYS looks like Expert Sex
Change to me now.

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serichsen
Four-square does look nicer to me, but it is not a big difference, because the
words' individual meaning is not important. You could say that "foursquare" is
simply a new word, and in english text about that company, you would write
about "Foursquare", not "Four Square".

On the other hand, experts-exchange is much better than expertsexchange,
because the two words carry own meaning---you would not try to create such a
word in english but write "Experts' Exchange". Therefore, I believe that these
words should be separated. The standard way to separate words in domain names
is the hyphen.

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puredemo
Isn't this obvious? Name a single popular startup with a dash in their domain.

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cheae
<http://www.digital-photography-school.com/>

It is a very successful website.

~~~
puredemo
[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digital-photography-
school....](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digital-photography-
school.com+ycombinator.com/)

Fair enough, they do have some good stats. Still very much the exception
however.

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erreon
I actually prefer hyphens when it comes to domains like Trip-Play.com or
something where it's harder to distinguish where words end.

Four-square.com probably would not have caught on quite as well though.

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abznak
It's not necessarily because dash-domains are bad, but out of the top million
websites, domains containing a hyphen are less common among the more popular
sites. See histogram at <http://abznak.com/pub/20101228_dashdomain.png>

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arn
I'd say if your business depends primarily on search/keyword traffic then
hyphens are ok. Otherwise, no, since you are just giving away traffic to the
non-hyphenated domain.

Example of search/kw dependent domain would be something like if you sold
wedding favors (wedding-favors.com, for example).

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notahacker
it could significantly reduce the value of the site if much of your potential
word-of-mouth traffic goes to the non-hyphenated domain first

Germany seems to be the exception in preferring hyphenated domains, which is
probably a consequence of trying to avoid multi-word domains being confused
with the German language's many clumsy-looking compound words

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Rubyred
If you are going to use hyphens, go f-u-n-k-y with it. Might be able to score
some awesome domain names that way.

