url names

[webguy]

Obviously its advantagous to have relevant keywords in your url. But I was wondering about something. Suppose I have a site about dogs and cats. I've heard that I would be better off naming my site dogs_and_cats.com, rather than dogsandcats.com, because under the former, spiders will recognize the words "dogs" and "cats," but under the latter, spiders will think its just one word called "dogsandcats," which obviously doesn't exist in the English volcabulary. Is there any truth to this?

[gjansen]

Hi webguy,

I would have to say it makes little to no difference. Of the 100+ things that Google uses to rank a site, the url is not that important. In fact, the sites that link to your site, and the text they use in the link is more important. Want to test that theory? Seach google for miserable failure and view the number 1 result. What url does it have?

In addition, I am confident they can detect the words 'dog' and 'cat' from inside 'dogandcat'. In my opinion, a hyphen separating words is easier to read.

My advice is pick a domain with your end users/readers in mind. A meaningful domain gives them a certain comfort level.

'Oh, www.all-about-cats-n-dogs.com' that must be all about cats and dogs. I think I will check it out'.

Last point I would make is that I have heard that words of less than 3 letters and numbers are not looked at by most search engine spiders.

Glen.