Leosghost - 3:12 am on Oct 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

But in addition www.keyword.com or www.keyword.com/somesubpage doesn't rank for terms totally unrelated to "keyword" or "somesubpage". For instance a phone number or a phrase that has no overlap with keyword.com.

But given the way they classify pages as "documents" and then what the contents of the "document" are..the document title will "tarnish" the quality in their eyes of the contents..That is the way they rolled panda out ..if they didn't like some of a number of pages..the entire domain ( all pages included ) did not get returned ( except very low down in SERPS) for any searches, whether or not they were related to the domain's primary subject..

They appear to like that way of doing things..and if one thinks ( as I do ) that they are now ( and have been for the last two years ) moving to "pre-sorting SERPs, for Amit's favorite goal "speed of returned results for queries"..a hitherto relatively minor "weakness" or "transgression" or perceived ( real or otherwise "spammyness"..and EMDs can be an indicator of that ) coupled with one or two other factors can put a domain into the "leave it out for now" or at least "the leave it out of the first ten or so pages" part of the "pre-sort"..

Thus allowing Google to get what they take to be less spammy results back to the searcher faster..

My point is that G went from one extreme to another. I think they should have devalued EMDs a few years ago. Instead they ignored them for several years and then instead of devaluing EMDs they banned them.

I would agree there with you , but they cannot do everything at once ( although they frequently try to get us to believe that they are doing everything at once, we can see different, when white text on white pages, and other old school spam techniques can still be found ranking well etc )..They are now rolling separate concurrent algo(s) , some out of phase with the others ( because the volume of data they are working on is so huge and growing ever faster )..They have not, as far as we know, "banned" any or all EMDs ( "banned", as in not returning them for a site:particularEMD query)..they are merely demoting some of them..hard..one could say that they finally got around to it..

Not all EMDs abuse their EMDness..but as incrediBill said ..very many have, and do..and some have just coasted along on their EMDness..that is no longer enough..