Question by Blake: Does a Hyphen in a Domain Name Affect Page Rank in the Search Engines?
For a example, say I want to create a website that ranks high in Google, Yahoo and Bing organic search for John Smith. Will it make any difference if I reserve the domain name johnsmith.com vs john-smith.com? Will the first one score higher in search ranking than the second?

Best answer:

Answer by geomark
Yes, all other factors being equal the unhyphenated domain name will rank higher for the search term “john smith”. That is because the name “john smith” does not normally occur with a hyphen. However, if the keyword phrase for which you want to rank DOES normally include a hyphen, then the hyphenated domain name will rank higher, all other factors being equal.

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