Double hyphen in URL - bad?

[CFSSEO]

Instead of a URL such as domain.com/double-dash/  programming wants to use domain.com/double--dash/ for some reason that makes things easier for them.

Would a double dash in the URL have a negative effect on the page ranking?

[ECN]

Indeed.com uses the double hyphen in their URL scheme and it certainly doesn't seem to hurt them.  I Imagine this is due to being able to reconstitute this back from URL rewriting so they know the difference between a dash in the URL that replaces a "space" vs a -- which would reconstitute back to a dash.

Example:q-Tennis-Channel-jobs.html

Maps back to the company Tennis Channel

Example: /cmp/Sag--aftra

Maps back to the company Sag-Aftra

[CFSSEO]

LOL I love it.

[RyanPurkey]

Or make the Keurig sessions min-value:10 every day until this is solved.

[EGOL]

I would tell programming that their access to the Keurig is invalid until they get this figured out.

[Bio-RadAbs]

• Have you seen websites use double dashes?

A single dash has become norm and users read it and use it that way, but a double dash is outside the norm in my opinion and you could end up with a lot of incorrect backlinks. A customer might type the URL with a single dash and end up with a 404 page for instance.

[RyanPurkey]

Hyphens are a very common convention in folder names, and while too many can possibly be a negative in a domain name (it-is-a-really-hyphenated-domain.com for example) they're an accepted practice in folder / file names.

One thing I'd ask though is if someone had a hyphen in their folder name to begin with, would that cause something like /double-----dash--becomes--quintuple--dash/ ?  If so I'd ask them to try a little harder to get the dashes down to a minimum, just for the sake of keeping the URL shorter overall.