• BBgmoro

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Get found
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
          Moz API

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. How is a dash or "-" handled by Google search?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        How is a dash or "-" handled by Google search?

        Technical SEO
        3
        4
        9067
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • idiHost
          idiHost last edited by

          I am targeting the keyword AK-47 and it the  variants in search (AK47, AK-47, AK 47) .  How should I handle on page SEO?  Right now I have AK47 and AK-47 incorporated.

          So my questions is really do I need to account for the space or is Google handling a dash as a space?

          At a quick glance of the top 10 it seems the dash is handled as a space, but I just wanted to get a conformation from people much smarter then I at seomoz.

          Thanks,

          Jason

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • idiHost
            idiHost @donford last edited by

            Great answer, very helpful!  I believe I will continue to primarily target AK-47. Now if Google would just penalize my competitor for his black hat link building.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MoosaHemani
              MoosaHemani Banned last edited by

              Well, if I would be at your place I would have select “AK-47” as the best option and this would be the justification for me.

              Google Considers ‘-’ dash as a space so in Google eye ‘AK-47’ and ‘AK 47’ will be considered as same. Now I have two options ‘AK-47’ and ‘AK47’.

              Ultimate target is to get better visibility in Google (mostly it is) and to rank well it’s a combination of On-page and Off-Page optimization. I believe with a page ‘AK-47’ and some variation of AK-47 and AK47 in link building activity will more likely help me rank well for both the terms.

              Even if you see the results in Google for these two terms you will not find much difference (at least on the 1<sup>st</sup> page)

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • donford
                donford last edited by

                A dash is considered a word separator. Similar topics can be found here in regards to dashes vs apostrophes, though this mostly references is in regards to a URL.

                The problem you're up against is one that I've personally dealt with on my site o-ring vs o ring vs oring vs o'ring.

                Do you use them all? Do you target just one? How does Google treat each one?

                Well there is NO good answer I have seen. If you target more then one variant and they are treated as the same keyword then you maybe hit for spamming, but if you don't you may lose potential traffic / sales.

                The only thing I can offer is more of a suggestion then anything. Go to Google and plug in the phrases in the keyword analysis tool found in the adwords account tools. In my case I found that three of the 4 of my keywords had the exact same monthly searches. This told me that those 3 words at least are being treated the same. So we picked the correct US English spelling and targeted that word.

                In your case, I would assume AK-47 and AK 47 are the same so really are left with targeting just the 2 you have been AK-47 and AK47.

                idiHost 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Browse Questions

                Explore more categories

                • Moz Tools

                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                • SEO Tactics

                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                • Community

                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                • Digital Marketing

                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                • Research & Trends

                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                • Support

                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Extima-Christian

                  Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?

                  Google Search console is telling me "Sitemap contains URLs which are blocked by robots.txt." I don't understand why my sitemap is being blocked? My robots.txt look like this: User-Agent: *
                  Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml It's a WordPress site, with Yoast SEO installed. Is anyone else having this issue with Google Search console? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?

                  Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian
                  1
                • RoxBrock

                  Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search

                  I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
                  Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.

                  Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
                  1
                • Closetstogo

                  Abnormally high internal link reported in Google Search Console not matching Moz reports

                  If I'm looking at our internal link count and structure on Google Search Console, some pages are listed as having over a thousand internal links within our site. I've read that having too many internal links on a page devalues that page's PageRank, because the value is divided amongst the pages it links out to. Likewise, I've heard having too many internal links is just bad in general for SEO. Is that true? The problem I'm facing is determining how Google is "discovering" these internal links. If I'm just looking at one single page reported with, say, 1,350 links and I'm just looking at the code, it may only have 80 or 90 actual links. Moz will confirm this, as well. So why would Google Search Console report different? Should I be concerned about this?

                  Technical SEO | | Closetstogo
                  0
                • FranFerrara

                  Why do some URLs for a specific client have "/index.shtml"?

                  Reviewing our client's URLs for a 301 redirect strategy, we have noticed that many URLs have "/index.shtml." The part we don'd understand is these URLs aren't the homepage and they have multiple folders followed by "/index.shtml" Does anyone happen to know why this may be occurring? Is there any SEO value in keeping the "/index.shtml" in the URL?

                  Technical SEO | | FranFerrara
                  0
                • IvanC

                  How can I Style Long "List Posts" in Wordpress?

                  Hi All, I have been working on a list-post which spans over 100 items. Each item on the list has a quick blurb to explain it, an image and a few resource links. I am trying to find an attractive way to present this long list post in Wordpress. I have seen several sites with long list posts however; they place their items one on top of the other which yields a VERY long page and the end user has to do a lot of scrolling.  Others turn their lists into slideshows, but I have no data on how slides perform against 10-mile-long-lists which load in 1 page. I would like to do something similar to what List25.com does as they present about 5-10 items per page and they seem to have pagination. The pagination part I understand however; is there a shortcode plugin to format lists in an attractive way just like list25?

                  Technical SEO | | IvanC
                  0
                • EugeneF

                  Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical

                  We are doing a "soft migration" of a website.  (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days.  These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site.  Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's.   Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?

                  Technical SEO | | EugeneF
                  0
                • tdsnet

                  301 for "index.php" in Web.config?

                  Hi there, I'm trying to create a 301 redirect for the file "index.php" but I keep getting a "fail to redirect" message in Firefox whenever I insert it into the Web.config file. <location path="index.php"></location> Is there anyway around this? Thanks for any help According to Open Site Explorer, there are about 500 links to my index file but it only has a 302 status so will not be passing link juice.

                  Technical SEO | | tdsnet
                  0
                • tdsnet

                  UK website ranking higher in Google.com than Google.co.uk

                  Hi, I have a UK website which was formerly ranked 1<sup>st</sup> in Google.co.uk and .com for my keyword phrase and has recently slipped to 6<sup>th</sup> in .co.uk but is higher in position 4 in Google.com. I have conducted a little research and can’t say for certain but I wonder if it is possible that too many of my backlinks are US based and therefore Google thinks my website is also US based. Checked Google WmT and we the geo-targeted to the UK. Our server is also UK based. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Thanks

                  Technical SEO | | tdsnet
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.