hyphens - advice-please

[vizzo]

Just interested in your thoughts. This is NOT for a domain to sell nor to rank for affiliate purpose. Its for use in a genuine business that needs to rank locally.
Once upon a time many-hyphens-were-used in spammy domains and they ranked well. Now they don't. but to me hyphens still look spammy. however they are really useful where words run together are not very clear. So the business already has a name and they want to use the business name in the domain name.
-
lets say their name is D & B Driving School - This is similar to (but not the same as I hasten to add) their name -

dandbdrivingschool.co.uk
dandb.co.uk - not available
d-and-b.co.uk
d-and-b-drivingschool.co.uk

They don't want to use some brandable name eg passrite -they want to stick with who they are and wghat they do in the domain.
I prefer the last of the four but I wonder if it has too many hyphens. Thoughts?

 

[Edwin]

d-and-b.co.uk is the winner for me, given your very specific criteria. Presumably since it's a driving school the web address is going to be plastered all over their cars, so it needs to be as short and simple as possible.

 

[Adam H]

Hyphens, regardless of usage to me look like junk.

Top one or the one that's not available for me. Hyphens just add confusion from an offline marketing perspective and were only any good for ranking purposes way back when.

If someone drives past with d and b driving school plastered on their car, type ins id imagine would be slim most of the time as most will just google "D and B driving school local area" but the few that do type in could get it wrong and miss the hyphen in my opinion.

If in doubt, register them all and redirect them to 1, under £20 a year isnt going to kill someone.

 

[martin-s]

dandbdrivingschool.co.uk for me - useful to have relevant keywords in the name for CTR if nothing else.

or possible dbdrivingschool.co.uk (why bother with the and?)

 

[lazarus]

dandbdrivingschool.co.uk for me, assuming dandb.co.uk has gone and not for sale at a reasonable price.

 

[vizzo]

or possible dbdrivingschool.co.uk (why bother with the and?)

The business is D&B Driving School - run by (lets say) Dave and Brian

 

[vizzo]

Thanks for your replies
Interested in this question too ...
As a business name (with implications for the domain name) for a business primarily targeting learner drivers ... Would you be more attracted to D & B Driving School, D & B School of Motoring, D & B Driver Training, D & B Driving Academy.
Also if you saw D&B SoM - would you realise it was a n abbreviation of school of motoring?

 

[Edwin]

Driving School. The other options sound unnecessarily pretentious.

 

[Pierre Barnard]

dandbdrivingschool.co.uk

 

[findtim]

"and" is bad enough as it is but adding hypens is worse, if you are on the phone your domain becomes " dhypenandhypenbdot........."
doesn't survive the "radio test" for me a domain HAS to not be spelt, the person needs to know what it is.
"and" = fail could be "n"
"four" = fail could be "for"

dump the ego and go TOWNdrivingschool....... in mmy opinion

tim

 

[RobM]

Also if you saw D&B SoM - would you realise it was a n abbreviation of school of motoring?

I don't think i can be the only one that saw that and immediately thought of S&M... or is my mind just in the gutter?

 

[Yoingco]

I would drop the D & B unless it was as famous as M & S. In other words, I would be thinking "who the hell is D & B? Sounds like a solicitor/law firm. Secondly, I would choose a name that tells people what you do and more importantly what they search for (i.e. LondonDrivingSchool, QuicklyPassDrivingSchool, etc).

With COPY & PASTE these days, that old dinosaur thinking of "remembering a long name" or "typing hyphens" is going to hurt my brain and fingers mentality is stupid. People copy and paste, bookmark, share, etc what one person originally had to type. I have never come across a person who said "Sorry, I'm not typing that long winded url, especially that it has one hyphen in it"!!

Hyphens, which I have used, can add clarity in some cases. clock-wise is an example - You might want to be known as wise with/about clocks in terms of clock repair as opposed to being a person who turns clockwise! Buda-Pest is another. Buda and Pest are actually two places, so if budapest.co.uk was not available you could try Buda-Pest.co.uk. Names with ss in them can be clarified with an hyphen. carelesssociety or careless-society.

 

[dog]

I never recommend hyphens.

 

[cm1975]

Plenty of companies out there with hyphens, especially where the unhyphenated is sitting with a large domain company who are holding out for top dollar. There is a market for them and I'm quite happy that they are not liked by everyone on here! It meant I was able to hand reg a domain that I sold for £500 a couple of years ago.