Since 1993, Network Solutions has registered more than 3.4 million domain names -- all limited to 26 characters. Now that their exclusive government contract is ending, competitors have tossed this artificial limit and are allowing longer names.

I did some digging into the original name space RFC to assure myself that the longer names were valid. To quote the RFC, "The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen. There are also some restrictions on the length. Labels must be 63 characters or less."
     ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1035.txt

With this in mind, my advice is to keep your domain name to 63 characters for maximum compatibility. Here is the registrar recommended by Michael Campbell, Declan Dunn and Corey Rudl:
      ttp://www.activemarketplace.com/domain

As Michael Campbell points out, in Nothing But 'Net, "The reason we want keywords in the domain name is that search engines often get 'tuned' to find, and give better positioning to, domains with keywords in them."

He goes on to mention examples like phone-phones.com and mobile-cellular.com, then notes that "After some experimentation the hyphenated domains did slightly better in search results than the non hyphenated ones. The hyphen seems to act as a delimiter."
      http://www.activemarketplace.com/net

Declan Dunn, author of Winning the Affiliate Game, sent out a memo to his affiliates advising "To get on top of the search engines, one of the critical keys is a good domain name LOADED with keywords." Declan gives several examples such as: CellPhone-CellularAccessories-CellularBatteries.com and Internet-Hosting-Services-Email-Marketing-Search-Engines.com

Declan goes on to say "this news is spreading among WebMasters, SearchEngine Meisters, Internet marketers, and big corporations. Don't wait."
      http://www.activemarketplace.com/winning

Corey Rudl, President of Internet Marketing Center, also told his readers of the news, saying "When I say this is time sensitive, I AM VERY SERIOUS. If you do not jump on the bandwagon now, and if you even wait a few weeks... you are going to lose out. All of the ".com" domain names that are in demand over 26 characters are going to be registered. (And trust me, there are a lot!)"
     http://www.marketingtips.com

John Audette's I-Search Discussion List, included a new post by the search engine expert, Webmaster T, who explained "Having a domain name with keywords in it is very important as it seems almost all engines are parsing URLs. Not only is the domain name important but also the directory and file names are definitely important."
      http://www.audettemedia.com/i-search

I have been registering hyphenated domains for our clients over the past year. It works. The past two weeks we have been quietly grabbing several VERY HOT, very long, hyphenated domain names.

If you don't want to get left behind, get your keyword-stuffed-long-domain-name right away!

Check here to see if the names you want are still available:
      http://www.activemarketplace.com/domain

NOTE: This is the lowest priced accredited registrar I've found, at only $30 per year, with a two year minimum.