suit-shop.co.uk vs suitshop.co.uk - quick (i.e non scientific) test

kate-brownhill · Jun 29, 2012

Following from and not wanting to Hijack Marcoose's thread any more then we already have i decided to start this thread to let some of you follow a very simple, non scientific experiment i just started today to see if we can spot any preferential treatment that Google gives EMD to hyphenated domains.

To cut a long story short, i placed 2 links on 2 domains (pm me for the domains) to two sites.

suitshop.co.uk
suit-shop.co.uk

The links are laid out like this:
Site 1: PR2
suitshop.co.uk (anchor "suit shop")
suit-shop.co.uk (anchor "suit shop")

Site 2: PR2
suit-shop.co.uk (anchor "suit shop")
suitshop.co.uk (anchor "suit shop")

both domains are brand new with no current links (apart from Sedo)

I will not change the homepage of either domains and keep them as Sedo parking.

Current rankings Google.co.uk for "suit shop"
suitshop.co.uk: Not In Top 100
suit-shop.co.uk: Not In Top 100

Yes, i know its not 100% scientific, but its all i can muster at the moment. There are FAR too many variables involved in this subject to make any test 100%. If you want to run a consecutive test to this one, feel free to add it here and we can monitor them all. The only thing i would change is i would have placed some content on the homepage of each site, but i dont have the time or will to do it at the moment. If you want to design two simple pages with very similar content, i will be more than happy to upload them to the site.

Updates:

30-06-12 -
suit-shop.co.uk has been re-crawled with the new homepage showing instead of the old Sedo page. Now ranking 150 on GUK for "suit shop".
suitshop.co.uk still has Sedo page cached and no ranking for “suit shop”.
Current Winner: suit-shop.co.uk

02-07-12
suit-shop.co.uk Now ranking 127 on GUK for "suit shop".
suitshop.co.uk still has Sedo page cached and no ranking for “suit shop”.
Current Winner: suit-shop.co.uk

05-07-12
suit-shop.co.uk Now ranking 146 on GUK for "suit shop".
suitshop.co.uk content page now crawled. Now ranking number 10 on GUK for "suit shop".
Current Winner: suitshop.co.uk

domsaleuk · Jun 29, 2012

Re suit-shop.co.uk v suitshop.co.uk

Hi - I will follow with interest. Well done for setting up as a new post - and if I find any other interesting info on hyphenated EMD versus non-hyphenated I may post here as we wait for the results and perhaps others will too

Regards

Marcoose · Jun 29, 2012

Thanks

Just to confirm suitshop was a catch? When? The - was fresh reg a few days ago unless im mistaken? Just trying to guage difference in domain age between the two. Looks like each variation is fresh in terms of links and archive.org so looking good for a fair comparison so far.

willbon · Jun 29, 2012

Are we placing bets?

kate-brownhill · Jun 29, 2012

Marcoose said:
Thanks Just to confirm suitshop was a catch? When? The - was fresh reg a few days ago unless im mistaken? Just trying to guage difference in domain age between the two. Looks like each variation is fresh in terms of links and archive.org so looking good for a fair comparison so far.

suitshop.co.uk caught 20th of June
suit-shop.co.uk FTR and registered 22nd of june

doodlebug · Jun 29, 2012

I would say the fact that they are both on a Sedo holding page means neither will ever get ranked regardless of of what links you do :|

kate-brownhill · Jun 29, 2012

I will let both get indexed by google (at the moment only suitshop.co.uk is) and then add a page at the same time.

domsaleuk · Jun 29, 2012

doodlebug said:
I would say the fact that they are both on a Sedo holding page means neither will ever get ranked regardless of of what links you do :|

Yes - I agree. It is a really good idea to do a test like this and we can see what happens but I too think the Sedo holding page is an issue and that there should at least be a couple of pages. Also a catch v a brand new reg "might" possibly be an issue as it may not be apples for apples although that is difficult to tell. Really for a test to work I think we would probably need to create two mini sites on domains that were both catches or both brand new reg's etc but I guess let's see how this one goes.

retired_member21 · Jun 29, 2012

There was a google parking page algorithm introduced - I doubt you'll see much success parking it at Sedo

kate-brownhill · Jun 29, 2012

I really dont think it matters if the domain is caught or not. They are both new domains. I.e the registered date is almost the same and neither have any google history at all. I cant see why one being caught would make any difference at all. If you think otherwise, please state qualify with some reasons.

as mentioned, I will place a very simple page on both domains.

domsaleuk · Jun 29, 2012

kate-brownhill said:
I really dont think it matters if the domain is caught or not. They are both new domains. I.e the registered date is almost the same and neither have any google history at all. I cant see why one being caught would make any difference at all. If you think otherwise, please state qualify with some reasons.

as mentioned, I will place a very simple page on both domains.

Hi - I did say "might" and clearly put that in quote marks as I don't know and cannot provide evidence but have got enough experience to think this may be a potential issue. What I know is that it is said that Google utilises thousands of things in the algo and it would not surprise me if it was able to cast points for names that had previously built up power.

I am fully aware that the Whois restarts etc when a name is caught - but there is a possibility in my mind that Google will assign some sort of points to names that originated earlier and hence to be sure to compare apples to apples I just think it would be better to do it on names that were exactly the same in every respect apart from the hyphen.

Personally I have to say I think this is a bit of a pointless exercise anyway because I don't think it is likely to work at all with Sedo holding pages and to really do a proper comparison I think you would need to create two mini sites as I said before, but I don't want to be rude as you offered to do this and I am interested to see how it goes.

doodlebug · Jun 29, 2012

To keep this fair the content on each site would need to exactly the same and then you would have Google counting one as duplicate.

Sorry to rainonyourparade.com but I think you need to put more thought into this :wink:

kate-brownhill · Jun 29, 2012

ok, placed some text on each page and made it as similar as possible without hitting duplicate content. also have very similar keyword content. Not going to get better than this and not really going to spend more time on it. I’ll just monitor this and see how it goes.

As said previously, we understand that there is no way that this is going to be 100% scientific proof, but it’s a good sample. No amount of thought will get you a perfect test. This is just a quick test, take it with a pinch of salt but I think it’s quite representative.

Marcoose · Jun 30, 2012

kate-brownhill said:
I really dont think it matters if the domain is caught or not. They are both new domains. I.e the registered date is almost the same and neither have any google history at all. I cant see why one being caught would make any difference at all. If you think otherwise, please state qualify with some reasons.

as mentioned, I will place a very simple page on both domains.

The guys at Market/Domains Samurai disagree with you on that one although to be fair it is in their interests to.

kate-brownhill · Jun 30, 2012

what exactly do they claim and where? Remember that we are talking about domains that have zero history or links. These domains have never been indexed by Google as far as I can tell. I just don’t see any good reason for Google to use the fact that one has been registered previously to its advantage at all. Also, how do we know that the other has not been registered at some point? Is that possible to check?

Marcoose said:
The guys at Market/Domains Samurai disagree with you on that one although to be fair it is in their interests to.

Marcoose · Jun 30, 2012

kate-brownhill said:
what exactly do they claim and where? Remember that we are talking about domains that have zero history or links. These domains have never been indexed by Google as far as I can tell. I just don’t see any good reason for Google to use the fact that one has been registered previously to its advantage at all. Also, how do we know that the other has not been registered at some point? Is that possible to check?

Just that domains that drop do sometimes carry over previous SEO benefits. I saw some videos a couple of years ago. It was either them or Domainface (that Kenny fella). In this case though there was no previous site so is as clean as a caught domain can be I guess other than IF the domain age (using cache, ignoring whois) did carry over and I doubt that.

Domaintools.com used to list a full domain's history but can't see the option now. Probably being blind.

The only difference I would say now is that if suit-shop.co.uk had a SEDO parking page while Suitshop.co.uk didn't, this could cause some disparity. Heard that Google temporarily penalises domains that have recently been parked. I can't quantify that because it was just something a friend of mine mentioned and to be honest I can't see any common sense reason why they would. I'll ask him and get back when I get the chance.

kate-brownhill · Jun 30, 2012

no worries there as they both had SEDO pages on and both got indexed. At the moment suit-shop.co.uk new homepage has been indexed and it is currently ranking 150 on GUK for "suit shop"

I will update the first post

Marcoose said:
Just that domains that drop do sometimes carry over previous SEO benefits. I saw some videos a couple of years ago. It was either them or Domainface (that Kenny fella). In this case though there was no previous site so is as clean as a caught domain can be I guess other than IF the domain age (using cache, ignoring whois) did carry over and I doubt that.

Domaintools.com used to list a full domain's history but can't see the option now. Probably being blind.

The only difference I would say now is that if suit-shop.co.uk had a SEDO parking page while Suitshop.co.uk didn't, this could cause some disparity. Heard that Google temporarily penalises domains that have recently been parked. I can't quantify that because it was just something a friend of mine mentioned and to be honest I can't see any common sense reason why they would. I'll ask him and get back when I get the chance.

kate-brownhill · Jul 5, 2012

Major Update:

Today suitshop.co.uk got re-crawled (still had the Sedo page cached yesterday) and its now sitting at number 10 page 1 of Google.co.uk

suit-shop.co.uk has already had the new content page crawled a few days ago and yet its still at number 146 page 15 for "suit shop"

Pretty powerful stuff right here but we will keep this going a little bit longer to see if there are any surprises later on.