What's your opinion of hyphenated domain names?

[Ankesh]

Hi Pete,

.edu sites usually rank higher than .com sites.

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Scott,

Thanks for asking. You've already received good advice.

My opinion is: go with non-hyphen names if you can find one. Because they are better from usability point of view. If you take a long view, you will face a nuisance after 5 years when your website is popular and people mistakenly type the domain without the hyphen.

From the search engines point of view, there is negligible difference between a domain with hyphens and a domain without hyphens. But from your audiences point of view, hyphenated domain names isn't a good idea.