That's great James! To answer your question, nixwebo I still believe search engines look at the entire picture. I believe hyphens played a much larger role back in the day when SEO was still new but now the top players are content and inbound links. If the keyword phrase you are ranking for is less competitive then I could see where the hyphens may make a small difference.
James, I still believe that if you were able to get a lot of inbound links to your non hyphenated domain, you would have eventually got ranked better. Did the hyphens expedite the process? Maybe. Only Google knows this for sure.
I've been ranked #1 with hyphens and no hyphens, and in my opinion, this shows there is definitely a "big picture" scenario working.
Bottom line, IMO. If there are two sites.... one with hyphens and one without. In the
long run, the site that will hold the better rank for the keyword phrase in question is going to be the site with the highest quality inbound links and relevant content.
I still prefer non hyphenated domains and the only reason I register hyphens is if the name is more than 2 words (2createawebsite excluded 'cause I didn't think that name out enough back in 2002 when I registered it.
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