Re: hyphens in domain names?

At 09:07 PM 4/15/02 -0400, you wrote:

>I'd be interested in seeing these studies. You also seem to
>contradict yourself...on the one hand you advise using the hyphenated
>name and then go on to say that it doesn't matter.

I'm looking...so far I found all the search engine stats I wish I had handy 
two weeks ago. Gotta fold fun debates into the workday, you know.  About 
the hyphen, my thought was to preserve readability when using small type, 
which I find to be a problem I face a lot.  I also wanted to address the 
business owner's original concern that fineemeralds.com felt uncomfortable 
to her.  In the end however, I think that traffic depends on how you 
advertise the site so much more than what the actual domain name is. That 
means that it's best to go with the name that the site's owner feels the 
best about, hyphen or no.

>People haven't gotten any smarter in the last three years and the
>'20th century' rule applies.

I'm amazed at how well people have caught on in the last three years, but I 
was thinking in terms of five or six years ago, when really great domains 
were still available and the best resource for searching the Internet was 
Yahoo!, and people typically looked for websites by guessing at 
domains.  At that time, not as many people were familiar with the Internet, 
search engines weren't as "evolved" and there weren't nearly as many web 
pages/domains.

>MY studies (I don't really have any, I
>just made that up) show that users are far more likely to remember a
>url with back to back characters than they are to remember a hyphen
>in the middle.
>
>Think about it, fineemeralds is a complete thought...fine-emeralds is
>ambiguous. The former may take a second longer or even a second
>attempt to enter, but is far more likely to stick in ones mind than
>fine-hyphenhere-emeralds.

I talked about this with my partner, who agrees with you.  His point is 
that, in the case of typing out a domain name for a business, any domain 
name other than the complete spelling of the business name means that 
you're hoping a user will guess at what you meant. I can't argue with that.

>--
>Al Sessions
>http://www.fultonchaindesign.com/mt (weblog)
>al(at)oldforgefd.org

Collette

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