Google doesn't 'read' colons, etc. You're asking about too fine a point. There wouldn't be any basis for Google to value one of your examples higher than the others, would there?

p/g

Thank you for the reply potentialgeek, but you are missing one key point:

If I didn't think there was a basis for Google to value one of my examples higher than the others, I would not have made the post above asking for learned opinion, would I?

potentialgeek was giving his opinion and i agree with it. As google ignores special characters it is very very unlikely that any of these page titles would yeild different results

I would imagine that since you may already have some pre-gathered idea on what google prefers

If I didn't think there was a basis for Google to value one of my examples higher than the others, I would not have made the post

that you may want to base your decision off of that.

Me? I use
Red Widget – Red Widget Supplier.
And I name my pages with Red_Widget_Supplier.

Red Widget – Red Widget Supplier

I agree that the choice of delimiter character is not very important and is largely a matter of personal preference.

I personally would avoid the repetition of "Red Widget," at least in such close proximity.

recent discussion on same topic
[webmasterworld.com...]

Tastatura - Thanks for that link. Not exactly the same subject, but certainly related, and an excellent discussion.

I'm beginning to think I see where JackR might be going with this, and I'm going to quote his example, with some emphasis added....

Red Widgets–Red Widget Supplier (no spaces)

Red Widget – Red Widget Supplier

Red Widget ¦ Red Widget Supplier

Red Widget : Red Widget Supplier

A while back, we had a discussion about the hyphen character, and I noted that the hyphen no longer seems to be treated exactly as a space. See...

Google search and the dash "-" character
What effect does a hyphen have on Google caching and search
[webmasterworld.com...]

I had assumed that the hyphen would be treated the same as a space in Google searches, but that wasn't quite the case. I noted that serps for two-words hyphenated and two words spaced are slightly different.

That would suggest, in the riddle that I'm assuming JackR might be posing, that his first example (with no spaces) is the least good of the four results, and the three remaining would please Google more. I still wouldn't make any distinction among the rest, but JackR might have something up his sleeve.

...a basis for Google to value one of my examples higher than the others...

...or, I might have it completely backwards. ;)

What say, Jack?

>>Red Widgets–Red Widget Supplier (no spaces)

I wouldn't hyphenate it that way under any circumstances.

I wouldn't either, but I think this is a puzzle of some sort, and hypothetical questions might be OK if they lead to some insight down the road.

The reason for my post seeking clarification was due to the fact that in my industry, the top ranking sites use a variety of delimiter characters, but primarily "-" and "¦".

Robert, you see what I am getting at - is the hyphen still treated as space, or does it no longer matter?

Or, is a " " (space) in fact the preferred option?

hint: key-word would be seen as "key word", but not exactly... use cusiously as you limit yourself...

I use - and ¦ sometimes as delimiters more for aesthetic reasons than to please Google - to separate words or phrases - but I don't expect Google cares about that. I do try to make sure that I put spaces around any keyword I particularly care about (even if it's in parens). And if I have to use anything in a page title, it'll be a dash and not an underscore.