Algo Change Targets Low Quality Exact Match Domains 9-28-2012

[martinibuster]

Matt tweeted [twitter.com]:

small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality "exact-match" domains in search results.

[lewis1]

I don't know (yet) if this means anything or if anyone is seeing anything different to this but...

Our affected sites are all hosted in the UK although they are .com domains and are targeted to UK searchers. Most show up for their main keyword on page 1 on google.co.uk but are nowhere on google.com. It's been like this for a few days, I thought it was just a matter of time that they all vanished from google.co.uk too. But they are holding out.

Anyone else seeing this?

[IanTurner]

I have one EMD making a recovery from the hit on the 28th.

It is a site which lost about 50% of traffic in the hit.

I'm guessing because it only lost traffic related to its exact match keywords it is now generating natural backlinks (no link building) with anchor text outside of its usual exact match (and variants) anchor text.

I am mainly seeing increase in traffic on phrases with none of the domain keywords, with just a little movement on the phrases with domain keywords at the moment.

My thoughts at the moment are that this update should be self-correcting if your site has broad enough content to generate backlinks with anchor text on terms outside of your domain keywords.

As a side note the other EMDs I had hit, which were highly focused (little variation in referring search terms) have been pretty much wiped out. The plan for these is to try to enlarge the sites and broaden the scope of the sites to generate more variation in anchor text.

[Play_Bach]

Still haven't recovered from this latest Google traffic cut. Looks like its going to be a long climb to get back to where it was. :-|

[scooterdude]

@IanTurner

As a side note the other EMDs I had hit, which were highly focused (little variation in referring search terms) have been pretty much wiped out. The plan for these is to try to enlarge the sites and broaden the scope of the sites to generate more variation in anchor text.

Does the above imply that tight niche sites are in trouble in googles Algo?

I have almost no emds, just keyword play domains, yet they were all relieved of what little Google traffic they had around the time this thread started.

< the discussion continues here: [webmasterworld.com...] >

[edited by: tedster at 2:50 pm (utc) on Oct 19, 2012]