Which is worse? .NET or having a - (hyphen) in the domain?
 

my first choice is taken.

So I can get the 2 word domain with a hyphen or with a .net/org/tv

Hmmmmm?

if your first choice is taken, then I would change names as it will suck having a .com out there being used while you are working on your .net or hyphen


for seo it doesn't make any difference

for word of mouth or tv/radio advertising the hyphen is bad, otherwise if seo or links only then hyphen is good

Good answer, thanks!

I hate having - (hyphen) in my domain name unless I own the .com as well..

As far as I know Google doesn't like the domains with hyphens.

just got inneractivism.com and inner-activist.com

:)

here is an long going discussion on matt cutts blog from google on hyphens..... it is said that there is no penalty for hyphens

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

Totally agree...J :thumbsup

There are no penalty for hypens at all.

actually, google likes domains with hyphens more then regular insertrandomwordsheredomains.com

i'd disagree on that, but each to their own.

I watched a talk that Matt Cutts gave. He mentioned something about the hyphen taking out the guess work of the algo trying to decipher the words. He also said the the G engine was pretty good at figuring out the words on it's own, but it's not perfect.

:2 cents:

I'll put my $ on this answer..:2 cents:

I have several domains that rank very well using hyphens. i don't believe that goog penalizes for it.

get neither and choose a different domain, you can brand anything. a dash or .net will only enhance that original .com

.net is worse then hyphen 100%

Yes .Net would be way worse.

Here are 2 great examples of the hyphen having no SEO hangups whatsoever

http://link-o-rama.com ..... :)

http://www.tommys-bookmarks.com/

for "the googles" no hyphen on a new site ...

maybe,
buy them all ...sending them to the same ip and experiment over time...

the names important but so is your content, how often you update the site with relative keyword content( when you have lots of competition ), the title, linkbacks etc. etc. etc.

just a :2 cents: