Hyphen or Underscore

[purplewitch]

So what is better for SEO with domain names... hyphens or underscores?

ie:
my-website.com
vs:
my_website.com

Thank you.

[Zolesz]

When buying a domain you should think about many things in order to find the best domain for your website:
1) Will my visitors like it?
2) Is it easy to remember?
3) Does it sound professional?
4) Will this break/help my seo?

It is certainly better to have hyphen ("-") in your domain name if you want to meet the fourth condition, but not if you want to meet all of the conditions. Using hyphen or underscore (especially underscore) in your domain name will make it to sound very unprofessional, your visitors will not like it because it is hard to remember and even if you get good ranking because it is more SEO friendly you will loose the visitors you get because they will never return.

[webgivers]

I think its better to go for a my-website.com rather than my_website.com

[dmmcintyre3]

I don't think you can get a _ in a domain name.

[rapiddog]

I don't think you can get a _ in a domain name.

+1
I, atleast, haven't come across one yet. :knockedou

[Erizo]

I don't think you can get a _ in a domain name.

Bingo!


No offense to OP, but you know what SEO is, but don't know that you can't put an _ in a domain name? o.o

[SiberForum]

SEO does not depend on the domain name you are using. I suppose everyone knows about that.

[Erizo]

Yeah, right... because if you get a four letter domain get's better ranking in search engines than a two eight letter words with a hyphen....

............................................________
....................................,.-'"...................``~.,
.............................,.-"..................................."-.,
.........................,/...............................................":,
.....................,?..................................... .................,
.................../..........................................................., }
................./......................................................,:`^`. .}
.............../...................................................,:"........./
..............?.....__...................................... ...:`.........../
............./__.(....."~-,_..............................,:`........../
.........../(_...."~,_........"~,_....................,:`........_/
..........{.._$;_......"=,_......."-,_.......,.-~-,},.~";/....}
...........((.....*~_......."=-._......";,,./`..../"............../
...,,,___.`~,......"~.,....................`.....}............../
............(....`=-,,.......`........................(......;_,,-"
............/.`~,......`-...................................../
.............`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....,__
,,_..........}.>-._...................................|..............`=~-,
.....`=~-,__......`,.................................
...................`=~-,,.,...............................
................................`:,,........................ ...`..............__
.....................................`=-,...................,%`>--==``
........................................_..........._,-%.......`
...................................,

[Prodigal]

I don't think you can get a _ in a domain name.

I second that!
You can only have an hyphen, alphabets or numbers in a domain name
& no special characters such as _, +, % etc is allowed when registering a domain name
Coming back to the question: S.E.O wise it doesn't really matters & its just your own wish
whether to include a hyphen or not however, its always good to avoid use of hyphens in domain names
freewebspace.com looks much better then free-web-space.com (just a thought)

[Decker]

Old thread to bump:) ( love the sig Erizo :D )

In short no underscores in domain names, dashes don't really matter any more it's content that is searched.

[Decker]

I believe that you'd better avoid using hyphens and underscores in your domains..

No Sh*t Sherlock, muppet!!!! - MODS!!!!

[deeplist]

-rep for the bot

+rep for the genuine answer