I would like to know the answer too. Anyone here know what is the answer to that question. I'll do some Googling and get back to you if I find an useful answer. You should email the people at Godaddy as they probably know..

There are theories floating around that search engines do use hyphenated HostGator names or domains with underscores as a small part of their ranking algorithm, in my view, using short hyphenated HostGator names do no harm and can only be beneficial. Hyphenated HostGator names are better for.

SEO.

Because the search engines can actually pick out keywords from the HostGator name URL and that weighs heavily in ranking...

I would vote for underscores..

Don't know why. but as email addresses allow underscores I thought that underscore would be better then dashes...

I agree if you have the budget and you got 2 word HostGator such as:.

Toothbrush.com << - this is for HostGator sales..

Getting tooth-brush.com will aid in.

Seo..

Thats not really true, search engines can easily pick up keywords in a url with out a hypen in between, I would say in terms of.

SEO.

No hypens is better as google tends to favour these over the hypenated ones...

In case of a HostGator name with a hyphen, search engines can distinguish every word in the HostGator name, giving a small advantage in search engine rankings.

When other websites link to yours using your HostGator name as the anchor text, the search engines can distinguish the words in this link, giving a slightly greater advantage in search engine rankings...

Thats simply not true. Domains without a hypen perform just as well if not better than domains with a hypen. The keywords are matched against the whole domain, having the hypen there makes no diffence at all. The only time hypens to seem to make a difference is when they are used to separate words in the filename...

Now I guess you should visit these links provided in the previous posts in this thread..

Http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/.

Http://real-cheap-domain-name-regist...rticles76.html..

Dashes are better for the search-engines, underscores are better for users; you choose...

Firstly matt cutts is talking about hypens verus underscores in the URL so that doesnt really relate to domains seeing as you cannot have an underscore in a domain..

Secondly, just because someone wrote an article about it doenst make it fact. It used to be the case that yahoo favoured hypens in the HostGator name (Google hasn't for many years) but there is no evidence of this anymore. The theroy behind that article is outdated..

Here is an exmaple using the current v7n comp.

Http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=.

Notice how the top positions are occupied by domains with no hypen in. So cleary the ".

SEO.

Community" doesnt believe that hypens offer an advantage..

Anyway back to the actual topic, the URL (yes thats URL NOT DOMAIN) with the hypens in is better..

When you search for two terms in OVT it makes no difference if you put a dash or an underscore between, it returns the same results.....

For a file name, can all different operating systems recognize the dash (I know underscore is OK)?..

Dashes for me too.

Domain_name just does'nt look good either IMO..

Slightly off topic but....

It appears that when building a GoDaddy site it is wise to use good keyword rich hyphenated names for both files and directories..

I prefer the hyphen cause I din't have to use the shift key...