martinibuster - 3:07 am on Sep 6, 2002 (gmt 0)

Okay, if this dosn't cure you of the notion that Google give preference to urls with the keyword in the domain name myth, then nothing will. Here goes:

"Wedding web design" is quite likely the cheesiest category for keyword-in-the-domain-name url.

<snip>Click here to view these hideously spammy urls

Now, review this <snip> search on Google for the keywords "wedding web design" and you'll see that the first 5 listings aren't even wedding related, much less have the keywords in their domain name.

Number six and nine are maybe halfway spammy, then 7,8 and 10 don't have the word wedding in it.

Now the big question: Where are all those spammy url's that we looked at in dmoz? Nowhere. The keywords didn't help them.

Other factors, on the page and off the page are coming into play with a stronger force than the keyword in the domain. It's a mistake to insist that the keyworded domain has dominance.

Give it a rest. It's not the keyword in the domain name that counts, it's the keyword in the text of links linking into your site, it's the number of links, it's on the page factors, etc.

Quite possibly, your index page may inadevertantly be optimized for the word "home" because of all the inner pages in your web site with text links back to your home page with the word "home" in it.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 6:14 am (utc) on Sep. 8, 2002]