Will Google take action against exact match domains?

[member22]

Is google going to take action against exact match domain websites that have been there for years but don't offer anything relevant and are just there because they have the keyword in their domain...

I see those on almost 90 % of my web search and I would say that at least 30 % of those websites that rank on the 1 st page of google should be gone because they are not relevant...

[tedster]

All we know is that Matt Cutts said he was going to take another look at the issue. That was in November 2010.

[member22]

Thank you,

[mrguy]

Most exact domain matches I come across are usually spot on about the domain name. Sure, I'd say out of 10 I see, maybe two are holder pages with links.

I don't see that as really being an issue and I think Google has better things to do at this point.

[Forbin001]

< moved from another location >

Ok Matt Cutts came out with a new video today. Basically its a possible algo shift targeting keyword rich domain names. This is from the video:

"We have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains, & some people have complained that we are giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains. So we have been thinking about at adjusting that mix a bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given 2 different domains it wouldn't necessarily help you as much to have a domain name with a bunch of keywords in it."

So what does this mean exactly? It means that a domain such as www.buy-productname-online.net might, and I emphasize, MIGHT take a hit in the google SERPs.

Here is a link to the video:

[youtube.com...]

[edited by: tedster at 8:32 pm (utc) on Mar 17, 2011]
[edit reason] use the original link [/edit]

[tedster]

First, a note that this video is from March 10 - you found it when another site embedded the original video in a blog article, so I changed the link to point to the original source.

I think you've got the essence of it - including the word "might". As this thread mentions, Matt first talked about this at PubCon Vegas in November 2010. The details in the video make it pretty clear that it's a complex issue, even though many webmasters feel there is an unfair advantage.

[setzer]

Ok Matt Cutts came out with a new video today. Basically its a possible algo shift targeting keyword rich domain names.

Good news for sites with brandable domain names.

[koan]

Not every topic can have a brandable, cutish domain name that'll become a household name like twitter, google, facebook. You're not always shooting for world wide success with the general publisc. Sometimes you want a name that will simply say what the content of the site is about and be easily recognized by searchers, and something like "red widgets forum dot com" is perfect if the site isn't spammy. Most people don't have a marketing budget in the millions to spend.

[chicagohh]

It will be interesting to see if Google differentiates between keyword-rich domains and exact-match domains. By that I mean the many exact match domains that are also good business names which hold quality content. Compared to keyword rich domains such as BuyRedWidgets or FreeRedWidgets. A good exact match domain could be Widgets.com or HoustonWidgets.com.

Generally, there is a difference in quality between these two styles of domain names.

[browsee]

I recently found a site in webmaster center forum - Panda thread. One site bought 'keyword' .com, .net and .co.uk (keyword starts with 'difference'). They released all the 3 websites, all articles start with this keyword. All the 3 sites are doing great. There is an example in the thread where they occupied entire first page. They don't seem to appear on Bing (Bing does not encourage these cheap tricks).

[walkman]

It's tricky. For example, CheapWidgets.com and BuyMy-Cheap-Widgets.com are very different and in almost all cases the CheapWidgets.com every incentive to have a site relevant to Cheap Widgets. Not 100% of the time but no signal is 100%, or near that.

[fom2001uk]

I agree. Exact match domains look a lot better than keyword-rich (aka spammy) domains, and clearly get better CTRs. So these might be spared in any algo tweaks.

Whether this makes any difference is debatable though. Most keyword match domains only rank well in less competitive areas, so clearly this boost is only minor compared to some other parts of the algo.

Also, the reason a lot of keyword domains rank well has nothing much to do with exact match effect, and more to do with the anchor text links they get by default (keywords in the domain).