Effect of Keywords in Domain Name

Anyone noticing any movement?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I have two sites that are totally unrelated. Each of these uses the main keywords in the domain name. One of them is in the form of widgetized-widgets.co.uk (hyphenised) and the other is like famousman.co.uk.

Both of them were launched about November/December 2004 and both of them got sandboxed. After a few months both of them came out and enjoyed good traffic for a few weeks before once again disappearing. Just this morning I noticed that both of them seem to be remerging and featuring for many keywords.

Both sites were white-hat optimised using very similar methods. During this period I have launched other sites using the same methods that have not been been filtered. The main factor with these two sites is the fact that both use keyword domain names. Is it possible that G was using this as an OOP filter, which has now been relaxed? Has anyone else seen similar results.

[I should add that this is based only on today's results. My sites may disappear again tomorrow but they are appearing for new search terms and I think (hope!) that they are on the verge of achieving a high ranking.]

[ontrack]

You've probably read about what's been happening since the 27th, my site was one of the one's that lost all it's high top ten rankings overnight for apparently no reason - but with one exception - I'm still number one for the search term that almost exactly matches my url ...

i.e., (a pretend scenario)
discountstoreproducts.com is still number 1 for the search term store products

So, I'm thinking there must be something to it, since this is the only search term I am still doing well with.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

It is probably connected to the June 27 events but unlike yours, my widgetised-widgets.co.uk site could not even be found on a search for widgetised widgets. You may have been getting the traffic for the words store products because these two words did not form your full domain name.

Perhaps you got the traffic because the keywords formed just part of your domain name. Some of my other sites that were OK used part keywords in their domain names, e.g. someonesnamewidgets.co.uk.

[DoingItWell]

That would explain what I currently see with some of my websites. The biggest site in terms of backlinks, age and traffic is getting hit on two keywords I've worked hard on, and new websites that are spinoffs of the old site, containing these keywords in the domain names, are now moving up fast in the SERPS.

[ontrack]

Here is a good example of how bad the current ranking tool is as well as how the search term itself matching the url is being given an overly inflated status ...

This page, <snip>, has almost nothing on it yet it appears in the top 3 for the search term - <snip>

[edited by: lawman at 1:47 pm (utc) on July 1, 2006]
[edit reason] sorry, no live urls or keywords [/edit]

[econman]

Check out the last few weeks of Google Data Center Watch threads. Thee has been a little discussion about certain sites with sandbox syndrome starting to become more visible on the data centers that have been using the new "Cobra" algorithms. In the past week or so, nearly all data centers are showing those new SERPs, so I suspect the new Cobra algorithms might be helping your sites.

Given the lack of more widespread comments about this, I suspect the new Cobra algorithms have not uniformly boosted all sites with sandbox syndrome, or perhaps more precisely, I suspect the new algorithms may only be helping newer sites in certain specific situations.

Your experience suggests -- perhaps -- that the Cobra algorithms might relax the downweighting given to new sites with respect to keywords that figure prominently in the domain name or URL.

But that's just speculation on my part.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Yes, but I think that it would be valid speculation. My sites are still ranking by the way.