In my opinion, you need them here.

Achtung, es gelten nicht genau die gleichen Regeln für "good-looking" und "great(-)looking".

"great-looking" mit Bindestrich, wenn es vor dem Substantiv steht:
What good is having a great-looking website...

"great looking" ohne Bindestrich, wenn es nach dem dem Substantiv steht:
The car is great looking.

"good-looking" immer mit Bindestrich, da das Wort ein "permanent compound" ist

"tailor-made" immer mit Bindestrich, da das Wort ein "permanent compound" ist


Hier sind die Regeln erklärt:
http://www.annies-annex.com/compound_words.htm
(unter "More Notes on Compound Adjectives")

Sorry, ich habe gerade keine bessere Quelle zur Hand.

Fleißige Studentin is splitting hairs.

But I think she's wrong. It is true that if you use these expressions predicatively (This car is great looking) you don't HAVE to have hyphen, but that goes for good-looking too. But it is much easier for the reader if you DO have a hyphen, and that's what counts.

When the expressions are used attributively, you certainly need a hyphen.

I would ALWAYS use a hyphen.

So would I, and I would consider it wrong without one.

Otherwise you invite the misreading

[looking website],

as if the website is intended only for looking, not for anything else.

At least we all agree that emarie is right to question the corrections that have been made to her translation. And we all agree that a hyphen is mandatory in the attributive case.

I'd also hyphenate it in either position. Not sure why, as usually when the adjective is in the predicate you don't hyphenate, but here you would read it as "the girl is great" and then stumble over the "looking" that came after it. The hyphen shows you that you don't stress the "looking" and that it belongs with the "great".
But can anyone find a reliable source to back up either theory? Is there a "rule" for it? Looking on the Guardian website I can just see it without a hyphen in the predicate, but then I can also see it without a hyphen before the adjective in some cases, and as f. S. says we all agree that's wrong.

CM2DD

I don't think you should look for "rules". Different style-books may say different things. What counts is the reader's ease of reading, and we all seem to agree what that means in this case.

#8 Don't bash rules, they're great - save you having to use your memory / common sense :-)