Can a domain name change to a short domain have an impact?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Shannon Dipple: Hi +Dumb SEO Questions ;
  
  Thanks for directing me over here to ask this one.  ;It has me very puzzled.
  
  I have a co-worker of sorts who has found a huge (triple) rise in Google traffic since changing to a much shorter, non-hyphenated name in the past few weeks.  ;He says that is all he has done that could account for the traffic.  ;And it isn't an EMD.  ;In fact, he changed from a hyphenated EMD to a non-hyphen brandable phrase.
  
  My question is, well, is that really possible?  ;Could a short domain have that much of an impact?  ;All of the links, etc. were kept.  ;It is just a domain name change.  ;
  
  I guess I can't wrap my head around thinking that would be such a huge factor in a change in organic traffic.  ;
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  Moeez Bin Hamid: Hi +Shannon Dipple,
  To answer your question, I would like to know how old is the website? That rise could be because of some seo done in the past. I am not sure if removing hyphens can triple the traffic, In fact removing hyphens is not a good move, as far as I have studied SEO. You use hyphen to tell google it isn't just one word.
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  Marty Eigner: Google doesn't like domains with hyphens. It also looks at the number of characters. The shorter the better.
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  Ranu Jain: Its really strange but good for you. ;I agree with Moeez here. ;
  
  You can look into Google Analytics and see what all keywords are giving the maximum traffic. There are chances that you had worked more on them and getting the results now.
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  Shannon Dipple: It's not my site +Ranu Jain. If this is true, I may change to a non-hyphenated name myself, but my traffic is fine. It will be interesting to see what +Dumb SEO Questions thinks too!
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  Simon Fryer: Hey +Shannon Dipple. I would add - and this is just my opinion, as people should explain when offering theirs - that there would be a nominal difference in performance between hyphenated and non-hyphenated domains, provided they aren't used excessively and the url isn't huge. ;
  
  I very much doubt that just the domain name change has produced the improvement, but rather other factors have contributed to it. It's possible that the old domain had some bad associations. It could be (if the website has been rebuilt) that previous technical issues have been removed. It could be that he's now capturing more branded searches. Really you would need to take a look in to GWT impressions, search queries and ranking changes to find what really caused the improvements. ;
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  Shannon Dipple: I know +Simon Fryer. I wish I could look at it. I do know that no technical work was done. All that happened, he says, is that the domain name was changed. Very strange to me.
  
  Update: There was some content cleanup from Panda (not duplicate but overuse of keywords) I now know of but nothing else.
  
  Shannon
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  Tony McCreath: It could be that the new domain came with some backlinks already established and their ranking benefit held.
  
  On changing domain did they set up redirects?
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  Search Lab Marketing: +Marty Eigner ;is correct.  ;Hyphenated domain names, as well as EMDs, non-TLDs, and longer domain names are generally perceived by Google's algorithm as less trustworthy than shorter, branded, TLDs.  ;If you want to read more on domain-related ranking factors check out Moz's 2013 search engine ranking factors correlation and summary report here: ;http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
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  Shannon Dipple: Thanks +Search Lab Marketing ;I have actually read the Search Engine Ranking Factors.  ;All things being equal (or not!) I guess I just didn't think it would be THAT much of an impact.
  
  Now I am wondering how much better I could do if I did the same thing, except I like my domain name and have branded it across multiple social media outlets.  ; But if this one factor has produced this type of result for my coworker, it is worth considering.
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  Joseph Paulino: Check if your co-worker has great content. The poor domain naming strategy was probably stopping the website from being rewarded towards its good points.
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  Shannon Dipple: He does have great content +Joseph Paulino. So that makes sense!
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  Chandima Bandara: +Shannon Dipple ;Don't worry as long as you have your SEO right, having hiphens won't do much harm. Trust me, I have seen thousands of websites making it on the number 1 in search results. But having said that, the shorter the domain the better it is.
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  Shannon Dipple: I totally agree +Chandima Bandara ;I wish I had made a shorter domain name on my own when I started my first site almost 5 years ago, but it's doing ok even with two hyphens.  ;
  
  If this had turned out to be a huge factor, I would change my own but his traffic has now gone back down.  ;It appears to me that there was an algorithmic penalty with his site that caught back up.  ;But it is interesting how there could be such an upswing, albeit temporary, in traffic simply from a domain name change.
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  Tony McCreath: My site has two hyphens between three very seo words. At some point I will switch to a branded domain but my hunch is it hasn't hurt me.