Exact Match Domains Update 9-28-2012 - Part 2

[themistral]

< continnued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

So guys, has anyone with an EMD who was hit, recovered at all?
If so what has worked for you?

[edited by: tedster at 2:51 pm (utc) on Oct 19, 2012]

[gouri]

When you guys talk about EMDs, does this include PMDs or is this considered a different type of domain?

Is it possible that the factors that could be affecting the rankings of EMD sites are also affecting PMDs?

[backdraft7]

@lewis - I would totally disagree. It's all about the EMD - it will kill your longtail and leave you likely with just the EMD terms and very little more. That is exactly what happened to my 12 year old EMD.
I went from 19,000 terms per month to 6. Such a cold & nasty move by Goliath after all these years.

[mihomes]

Anyone else notice another drop recently? I crawled up to page 3 about a month ago and today I looked at was around 250'ish total. Funny thing is a few of my site pages were ahead of my domain. I just don't get what the heck they are doing. I have gone from page 1 for years and years to nowhere to be found, to page 15, to page 2, page 7, and now whatever page 250'ish is on. Minor changes if any at all during all of this - there was no change prior to this recent drop either.

[petehall]

@lewis - I would totally disagree. It's all about the EMD - it will kill your longtail and leave you likely with just the EMD terms and very little more. That is exactly what happened to my 12 year old EMD.

My troubled EMD ranks for everything bar the EMD term. Makes me wonder if this is actually just over optimised due to the company name being the same, etc. But then surely most people like to big brands by name, so they would end up in trouble.

[driller41]

In my experience it is oncoming links of poor quality/unrelated sites that is kicking off the demotions.

Most of my EMDs have been torched, the ones I built links to from the usual rubbish places - web2.0, bookmarks ect are gone, age did not help, a couple if sites I left alone are still there and ranking/making money - google must hate me for this :)

As to the 301 redirect - I thought it was established that the new site will rank for a few weeks then the penalty catches up with it and it is demoted - again I found this to be the case from my tests.

My best result with a demoted site was to register a new domain name and move the whole thing across without a redirect - the new site is still ranking.

[petehall]

Any movement on the position overscan?

[overscan]

Funny you should ask. Fell to mid 40s over the weekend. Decided not to touch a thing and hold fast just in case this was some sort of google a/b test. Then we popped up at no.9 this morning. I'm not going to open the champagne just yet as who knows where we will be tomorrow.

[overscan]

Errrr... no.5 now

[mihomes]

wow... as long as this holds I think we can safely say there is some weird stuff going on with emd's. Please keep the topic updated. I had something similar happen to one of my sites... while I kept the same domain I did a major overhaul of the site design and file structure with quite a bit of 301's going on. It went back to somewhat its original spot pre all of this changing then gradually slipped more and more - this was the same emd though.

If this holds I guess we all need to ditch our prized and aged emd's and come up with a made up 'brandable' name... ugh.

[overscan]

It wouldn't be fair to say that it was just a domain name change for me. I have also radically overhauled the site, tried to boost the amount of content where I can with longer more detailed product descriptions etc and added quite a bit of new content with a guide that relates to my niche. Altogether it's a much stronger site now than it was when we were hit with the google EMD nonsense.

[overscan]

Forgot to say also did a major audit of incoming links. Disavowed quite a few and also emailed out to try and get links changed to branded keywords.

[petehall]

It wouldn't be fair to say that it was just a domain name change for me. I have also radically overhauled the site, tried to boost the amount of content where I can with longer more detailed product descriptions etc and added quite a bit of new content with a guide that relates to my niche. Altogether it's a much stronger site now than it was when we were hit with the google EMD nonsense.

But am I'm right in thinking that between putting the 301 in place and results today not much else was changed?

[mihomes]

When you say getting links changed to branded what exactly do you mean? Are you telling people NOT to use your emd keywords to link to you or you ARE telling people to use them? I am curious as I have always used my kw1kw2 emd as my brand name and how most people link to my site(s).

[overscan]

@petehall Since reverting our domain name from the EMD back to our old domain name I have made only minor changes to the site.

@milhomes sorry, I wasn't very clear. I have been asking people not to use our EMD keywords when linking to us. In my opinion this must be one of the prime EMD killers. If you think about it, google already tried to punish this with penguin. The EMD update seemed a bit like a combined penguin and panda on steroids so it might be logical to assume that heavy linking using your EMD keywords could sink you. I suppose in our case the funny thing is that since moving to the EMD (about two years ago) we haven't done any extensive link building. All of our old school link building was done on our old domain.

[overscan]

Still page one this morning. Seem to be at No.7 (bouncing around 5,8,9 yesterday evening).

[mihomes]

That makes sense and it is one of the theories I have been saying for awhile now. A lot of people always thought EMD's were given preferential treatment and I always felt this happened naturally (you were generally linked to with your emd keywords as that is what your content was about - among other things). Now, I believe they have an algo that penalizes this (checks for kws in the domain) - it applies to all domains probably, but only affects emds as they are the only ones with the kw's in their domain name. Pretty stupid thought process by Google if you ask me.

Hope it stays for you - you definitely got me thinking about trying this as well.

[petehall]

Changed mine yesterday and gone from position 360 to 12 in just over 24 hours. Yes we re-designed the site last year but none of this made any difference, in fact after January things got worse.

I know it's early days, but I'm now thinking EMDs that rely on the EMD term for traffic are really bad news... be careful folks!

[driller41]

Are you 301'ing from the old domain to the new domain? If so then the old demoted ranking will pass across within 4 weeks.

I have found it best to start afresh with the same content on a new domain and no 301.

[petehall]

@driller yes that's right. But overscan has been improving over a period of more than 4 weeks now, with total success. I think each case will be different. There is nothing to lose trying this first.

May I ask, did your position typically return to where it was before penalty hit within 24-48 hours?

[IngoZ]

EMDs are doing very well in SERPs, for example proxylist.com is on page 2 and it's a Sedo parked page... Content is king, Google is always right.

[rustybrick]

Can you EMD folks please post some details on what you did, where you ranked before, where you ranked immediately after and where you ranked a couple weeks after? Would love to see the state of the EMD. :)

[mihomes]

Assuming you guys are doing an htaccess 301... are you doing page for page from old to new or anything from the old always to the index of the new?

Both should react differently so just curious.

In theory, if the domain's ranking drop was caused strictly due to emd issues (as is this topic is based) then while that demotion may carry on through 301 to the new one it should not 'stick' forever as the new domain is not subject to the emd issues.

[lewis1]

@mihomes, ours is on a page level basis. We're hovering around positions 5 - 8 at the moment. We used to be #1 but still many pages to get picked up and redirected.

[overscan]

Our 301 was page to page set up in the .htaccess
In fact we essentially reversed a 301. Website was originally launched 2005 (call it domain A). 2011 we rebranded to an EMD (domain B) and set up a 301 on a page to page basis from A to B. Now 2013 we have switched back to domain A and set up a 301 from B to A.

Six weeks later and we're top 10 for our former EMD keywords. Still bouncing about (8,9,10). It might not last, but honestly we have nothing left to lose by trying this.

@rustybrick I will sit down later and see if I can list our pre and post EMD update rankings

[petehall]

In theory, if the domain's ranking drop was caused strictly due to emd issues (as is this topic is based) then while that demotion may carry on through 301 to the new one it should not 'stick' forever as the new domain is not subject to the emd issues.

My thoughts exactly, unless of course the issue is not because of the EMD in which case it would be kind of nice to have it eliminated anyway. We can then go back to the EMD which we (all, presumably?) loved anyway and work on the real issue.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

We can then go back to the EMD which we (all, presumably?) loved anyway and work on the real issue.

Oh, uh, er, well, I wouldn't count on that.
Can't uncook the egg.

And with Rank Modification in play, I personally wouldn't even try:
Thread: [webmasterworld.com...]
Patent: [patft.uspto.gov...]

I think people should take a good long read of the thread & patent personally.
They seem to lend quite a bit of "clarity" to things people report and can't figure out the cause of.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

Okay, watch the video and see what you think.
[youtube.com...]

I watched no less than 5 times now and don't hear him say it's not in use, he implies, but usually from what I've seen in his videos when he really wants to "dispel the myth" he flat out says, think "keyword meta tag no in use".

There's enough bouncing reported in this thread after 301 redirecting a non-EMD I think it's pretty obvious there's some mechanism causing it.

[petehall]

Oh, uh, er, well, I wouldn't count on that.
Can't uncook the egg.

You misunderstand me. If the penalty 'follows' then its clearly not the EMD, so might as well look for something else and use the EMD. Which makes sense, after all.

[mihomes]

There's enough bouncing reported in this thread after 301 redirecting a non-EMD I think it's pretty obvious there's some mechanism causing it

Totally agree. Whatever it is I believe it is in place for all domains, however, only applies to emds due to their nature. With that said, I think this goes back to incoming link anchor text. For the most part, emd backlinks to the homepage are generally the emd keywords as the anchor text. This occurs naturally as many used it as the title/brand of their site and/or it accurately describes the content within it. This theory also goes back to all the people saying emds had an advantage - in a way there was because it was an emd and most people would link to it with those keywords, but it certainly was not a specific algorithm raising their rank. I believe Google's solution was to implement something where when a % of incoming links have the emds words in them they are penalized.

This would only apply to emds of course. In my niche all top listings now are non-emds - they are made up company names or combinations of words that do not necessarily apply to the content of the site.

For those saying emds are ranking I think you will find one of these applies :

- no competition at all for the term
- the domain has basically no content on it
- it has little to no incoming links

The above might correlate to incoming anchor text theory as well - for instance, because there is no content on the domain about the emd keywords the emd itself is not penalized? It could be more than just incoming link anchors is what I am getting at such as the emd words used on the page/site, in headers, in titles, etc. It sounds as though if you have an emd you cannot use those words at all basically.

When you think of this as a whole it starts to sound like something Google would deem over optimization (the keywords are all over - domain, titles, content, etc) when in reality we are old enough, lucky enough, (insert whatever here) to have an emd in the first place. Sounds like they are trying to level the playing field since emds have always been coveted and hard to get - in reality - they are destroying emds entirely and certainly not making things fair across the board.

If they are stuck on keeping this in place - how about they just remove words in the domain name from every algo - your domain name and the words that make it up have zero to do with any ranking whatsoever - sounds like that would make everything a lot fairer.

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

If the penalty 'follows' then its clearly not the EMD, so might as well look for something else and use the EMD. Which makes sense, after all.

I really didn't misunderstand, but now there seems to be some question about the Rank Manipulation patent being used.

If it is being used: 301ing, noticing the penalty follows, then reverting to the EMD is likely something it would detect as manipulative, imo, so once you move, you may not be able to "just undo the 301" and return to the "status quo" of today. It's possible the change/reversion wouldn't "undo" the move so the site ranks the same as it did before the move, and in that case you would have another issue (variable) to deal with (try to figure out).

But, at the time I posted I hadn't seen the MC video and I think people are going to have to decide for themselves if they've seen enough "odd movement" after changes to think it's being used in some way or if the "implication" it's not in use made by the video is more accurate.