Pure keyword domains

Do they score brownie points with Google?

[pauldmitri]

Does Google show any preference in the rankings when the domain is composed of exactly the keyword and only the keyword (dot) com that is being searched for.

On other words, if the the keyword that is being searched for is xyz, and you own the domain xyz(dot)com.

Should it rank better than say xyzonline(dot)com, xyzsource(dot)com

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, pauldmitri.

There are over 100 scoring elements in the algorithm. A keyword in the domain name appears to be one of them, albeit quite a minor one.

[Haecceity]

Say someone invents the "fgwidget" tomorrow -- the first person to set up www.fgwidget.com will have many advantages besides the domain name. If you get a chance to register a domain name for some new search term then go for it.

However it's no guarantee. The site that has keyword.com in my field (67 million results) has a Flash index page that loads as slow as cold molasses - and it's at the bottom of the second page of results.

Very commonly a site that has a domain name like www.keyword.com will have been established very early on and will have many inbound links. It would therefore be difficult to say what effect the domain name in isolation had.

[pauldmitri]

Haecceity,

The domain that I own was purchased from a guy who operates a very large domain portfolio, although he simply had the domain "parked" and therefore just pointed the nameservers to someone like DomainSponsor who allows people to monetize traffic via paid search links.

Therefore, there are not very many sites that link to it.

Do you think it will still be advantageous? Does Google place much favor on the pure ________.com domain?

[tedster]

Not that much per se. But as you develop new backlinks, the potential for have that natural keyword in the anchor text is a nice fat plus.

[frox]

keyword-domains are RARE and expensive, but they do give an advantage.

Per the TOS here, I cannot give more details, but there is a recently-come-out way of monetizing websites that is known with a three-letter acronym. Let's pretend it's ABC (it isn't)

I am In italy, and registered the ABC.it domain exactly an year ago (the mainstream TLDs were gone long ago)

I installed Wordpress on it, put up a small blog, wrote about 15 articles on that, and did a VERY modest link building activity

After a year, it has a modest PR2, and searching google.it (pages in italian) for "ABC" you have:

1 - my www.ABC.it (PR2)
2 - a PR3 page on the subject from a PR7 site
3 - a PR4 page on the subject
4 - a PR4 page
....

I think this a good example of the bonus that keyword-domains still have...

[Haecceity]

Do you think it will still be advantageous? Does Google place much favor on the pure ________.com domain?

I think it's definitely advantageous. Like Tedster, I think the main advantage will be in the fact that you'll have the keyword in a lot of the anchor text pointing at your site. However I put more value on that than Tedster seems to.

I think your site stands an excellent chance of ranking very highly for your keyword as you build links - as long as you don't do anything dumb or don't get caught doing anything dumb.

[ZoltanTheBold]

Can this really be as relevant as it once was? Given the lack of good domain names, and the evident shift towards sophisticated means of determining relevancy (e.g. the context of the page your backlink is in etc), it all smacks of desperation and a small-time mentality.

I have always used brand names as domains, and it has worked for me. I believe this is even more so now and am of the view that if you have to rely on this kind of approach then you're doomed to forever wallow in the tiny details of SEO. The trend seems to be moving ever further towards encouraging people to make websites that real human beings actually like, and they couldn't care less about keywords in domains, like google.com. Doesn't mean a thing.

[bobmark]

Its always better to have widgets.com if you're selling widgets, but, as pointed out, in most competitive areas widgets.com and every possible permutation were registered long ago.

Google also favours the keyword as it comes up in all searches (look at the highlighted words in the results and you'll see how valuable widgets/bluewidgets.html is).

If I'm in - for example - travel I'd give a lot to have hotels.com.