Google: Hyphens In Domain Names Not Considered Low Quality

Mar 7, 2023 - 7:41 am 2 by

Google Lines

Google's John Mueller was asked if having hyphens in your domain name, like www.my-site-goes-here.com, can cause ranking issues in Google Search. John Mueller said no, domains with hyphens are not seen as low quality by Google algorithms.

Here are those tweets:

Now, the question came up likely because of the leaked Yandex Search source code. But it is not a new question.

In 2007, we covered the topic of having multiple hyphens in a domain name potentially triggering a Google SEO old myth named the hyphen filter. But when it comes to picking underscores or hyphens in your URLs, Google has said time and time again to go with hyphens over URLs because they are word separators.

While it may look spammy to have a ton of hyphens in your domain name, it probably won't be downgraded in Google Search for just doing that.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 30, 2025

Sep 30, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Ads

Is Google Ads Reporting Also Impacted By Num=100 Change?

Sep 30, 2025 - 7:51 am

ChatGPT Gets Instant Checkout With Agentic Commerce Protocol

Sep 30, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Tests Dropping Underline From Search Result Snippets On Hover

Sep 30, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Tests Progress Bar For Shopping Ads Carousel

Sep 30, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google AdSense

New Google AdSense Traffic Source Breakdown Report

Sep 30, 2025 - 7:11 am
 
Previous Story: Google Search Tests More To Ask & Other Alternatives Of People Also Ask?