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

[idiHost]

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

[idiHost]

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.

[MoosaHemani]

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^st page)

[donford]

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.