Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad?

Posted by rhygar on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:10PM
from the ask-hn dept.

How bad is it to use a hyphenated domain name for a startup? I.e. what if foursquare.com was four-square.com.

Would this significantly reduce the value of my site?

( 14 comments | 10 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by Mithrandir on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:14PM (#2043960)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by byoung2 on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:25PM (#2043987)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by spooneybarger on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:13PM (#2043958)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by byoung2 on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:20PM (#2043974)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by cmontgomeryb on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:31PM (#2043999)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by serichsen on Monday December 27, 2010 @07:19PM (#2044100)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by puredemo on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:33PM (#2044003)

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

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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by cheae on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:45PM (#2044029)

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/

It is a very successful website.

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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by puredemo on Monday December 27, 2010 @07:43PM (#2044165)

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digital-photography-school....

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

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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by erreon on Monday December 27, 2010 @06:16PM (#2043963)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by abznak on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @03:43AM (#2045008)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by arn on Monday December 27, 2010 @07:44PM (#2044167)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by notahacker on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @07:00AM (#2045246)

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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Re:Ask HN: Hyphenated domain names, good or bad? by Rubyred on Monday December 27, 2010 @11:31PM (#2044637)

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.

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