To hyphen or not to hyphen?
A Web site needs a domain name, so that human visitors can tell their browser where to go.
Notice, by the way, that the name is just for human visitors. The browser itself uses the 4-number Internet Protocol address, which it has to look up once it’s told the domain name. (If this is gibberish to you, let it be. Or if you’re curious, you can find simple explanations on Web Costa Blanca’s FAQ page.)
The name should make sense to visitors, and stand out for search engines. So a lot of thought can go into choosing it.
There is one issue, however, on which no one is agreed—and many people are dogmatic. If the name is made up of more than one word, should you use a hyphen between them or not? Which is better: webcostablanca.com or web-costa-blanca.com? michaelscannell.com or michael-scannell.com?
Incidentally, this is a dash: —
and this is a hyphen: -
You can’t use dashes in a domain name, only hyphens.
Some authorities say, “Never use hyphens”. To some eyes, they look ‘unprofessional’. Others notice how much easier the hyphenated versions of names are for human beings to read, and for search engines to split up correctly. The standard problematic name is goodsexporters.com. A name like goods-exporters.com will stop humans and search engines from expecting carriers of good sex.
It may be more difficult to spell out a domain name on a telephone when it has hyphens. Rather than say, “That’s cheap hyphen cars hyphen and hyphen vans dot com” many people would prefer to say, “That’s cheap cars and vans—all one word.”
I myself remain firmly on the fence. I recommended webcostablanca.com for the company site, and picked michael-scannell.com for my personal site. I thought the version without hyphens looked better in a company name—especially one with three words— and the version with hyphens looked better for my own name.
I am so stuck to the fence, however, that I bought the alternative versions, in both cases, and parked each on the appropriate site. So people can type web-costa-blanca and still get the company site, or michaelscannell and still get my own site.
As any of my ex-partners will tell you, I’ve always had a problem with commitment…