Is dash in domain name bad for Google?

I'd like register domain in .US domain zone and with - (dash) in name.
Now to indexing Google and other this domain zone? I see rarely US sites on the top place in Google.
Is it try?

i'd be more concerned with how people will deal with a hyphen in the URL than google. as long as your site is well built, well optimized, and full of useful content, you shouldn't have to worry about the SE's.

Typically you want to avoid hypens so it makes it easier for people to remember.

As for the .us extension, i think .com's are typically viewed as more credible sites, but i don't know that there is any sort of penalization for those extensions.

Hope that helps.

I would discourage you from doing that. I completely agree with ran_dizolph.

It is harder for people to remember. For instance, a site named even hardware-co.com most people when trying to revisit the site, will type in hardwareco, completely forgetting the hyphen, its not noticable. The .us extension will make your site even harder for people to remember, .com, .net, and .org are the common ones, nobody is gonna really remember which one your website used, nobody pays attention, for regular people they will assume .com and have little knowledge of anything other than that. People like me still dont pay attention to the extention, but if site.com wasnt correct, I goto site.net, site.org, and if neither of those are correct, I give up. .us wouldnt even be something anyone would consider a posibility, the only way you are going to get revisitors, is if they bookmark it, write it down, remember how they got there... theyre not gonna remember the domain name. Rarely used symbols and extensions lower the chances of getting revisits.

As for SE's, I am almost completely sure it will not affect it at all.

The reason you dont see many .us extensions is because there are not all that many sites with the extention .us [in comparison to the more popular .com, .net, .org, and even .gov].

completely agree.

.us extension does not exist very long yet either ... and yeah, peoiple don't even consider it. it might be fun, if you have it in the slogan or so ... like www.toysr.us

on a side note: hyphens got really popular in german domain names and there, i would say, people prefer it to have a hyphen in there (like my parents cafe site www.cafe-wanders.de)

Thank you guys.
I'll check name in .com

I'm not sure if they're frowned on by google, but you often get spammy sites using hyphens in domain names like free-hoodia-drug-information-lose-weight-now.com

Hyphens are actually an optimization technique for search engines. Any sites containing more than two hyphens are considered spam and are penalized by google, but if you have a site like abc-xyz.com, the search engines will read it as abc xyz. However if it's just abcxyz.com it's read as abcxyz.

But don't worry about the domain name so much with the hyphen. Just get the keywords in your domain name that you want, just don't overdo it.

You say this like it's a fact, can you point to any proof that more than two hyphens are considers spam or is it just your opinion?

He said its considered spam by google, and thats not hard to believe at all, I havent ever came across a result from google that had 2 hyphens, and very very rarely a site with even 1. Its just statisticaly spam sites have longer domain names, numbers, and hyphens.

Really it's just common sense when you think about it. Haven't you seen those gimmick sites that are like make-thousands-from-your-own-home-today.com ? How many legitimate sites do you see with more than two hyphens, or even one for that matter? Not very many. Those sites are propped up with a picture of a person with a page loaded with testimonials and ask for a one time $100 paypal payment when they deliver an eBook full of affiliate links...Google sees this and doesn't tolerate it. For one, those sites are up and then down almost overnight after they have scammed enough people and Google doesn't put much faith into them. Don't believe me? Google any keyword and I can guarantee you that you won't find a domain name packed with hyphens to be listed even in the first 10 or 20 pages. You might not even find one in the top 100 pages!

Of course a lot of SEO is just pure theory, but we have a general idea that certain things work and others don't so well.

Don't know that any of you will ever see this, but, the notion that more than one hypen/dash in a domain name will be perceived by Google as spam doesn't hold water with me.

Try this:

Go to Google.
Type in the search phrase, buy madison real estate .

When I did, the organic listing for buy (dash) madison (dash) real (dash) estate (dot) com appeared second out of 1,210,000 results.

Dare I say, "I rest my case."

Jay Reifert, Broker/Owner
Excel-Exclusive Buyer Agency
Madison, Wisconsin

Owner of many, many multi hyphen/dash domains.

It's really very strange to read domain with so many hyphens in it. I'd say it looks not very nice.

I think search engine read hyphen as a space, alternatively I find if you use hyphen the search engine will read it two individual word that could be precise especially if you are looking for a domain name with two individual word. ( but more than one hyphen does not look nice).

I second on this as now it is right time to use hyphens as this might be a point where Google may start considering such sites as it does for the others without a hyphen.
We need to do a few things that will make SE think or change their strategy a bit regarding the use of a hyphen in the domain name.