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Do you think the SE's, will start looking at these kinds of domains as spam?
Google can't ignore keywords in domains. It's a central part of their algo. Links to sites carry those keywords.
If my site has incomming links saying "widgets" how does that have anything to do with my domain name?
Even for incomming links saying "www.widgets.com" I can't se the connection with my domain name as an non alterable parameter.
I don't think that Google has build their ranking system so rigid that they can't downgrade or turn off the importance of domain names (or any other parameter).
Lots of sites ranking #1 has domains like www.mycompany.com not containing keyword in mycompany.
There is shortage of domain names so www.blue-fuzzy-widgets.com or www.mycompany-fuzzy-widgets.com might be "legitimate" and nessesary, but giving weight to domain names is IMHO outdated. Today it's possible to buy domain name and one year of hosting for less than $60, while you have to pay $299 for a Y! listing. This in mind I think domain names will suffer the same fate as <meta keywords>.
Yidaki:
If I'd be looking for cheap examples and happened to be marsian, and would find cheap examples on mars at that site, than I wouldn't see any reason why this would qualify as spam under any reasonable definition?
But there's another discussion going on here: cheap sounding names vs respectable names.
All I can say is there's room and purpose for both. As there is for fast and short lived commercial sites vs more longlived more informational sites. I have no problems with either of those concepts.
Treat - the same as they treat _ in domain names. Problem solved.
Do you suggest some webmasters could use some "disposable" domain names for SEO?
IMHO you gave the perfect example of *what i call* a spam domain ... allthough i like your funny example. ;)
we encourage a friendly, civil and professional tone here on the board.
Sorry Heini, I was not directing that comment at anyone. I was simply pointing out that an excessive number of hyphens was stretching believability to the limit ... if trying to claim a site is not "spammy".
Perhaps, I should have said:
keyword-stuffing-for-the-purpose-of-providing-search-engine-fodder-while-trying-to-make-others-believe-your-site-is-on-the-up-and-up!
Guess I was getting lazy. Using that bad word was just shorter!
Whew, I need ice water to cool off my finger tips. All that typing wore me out! :)
That's the power of keyword in domain names
I know (actually thats why you would use the "www.cheap-examples-on-mars.com" domain), but I can't see why Google could not change their algo to not include or give less points to domain names.
Europe, the problem is Google can't ignore keywords in domains. It's a central part of their algo. Links to sites carry those keywords. It's the Google algo that produces those domains.
I question the assumption that keywords in domains are, should be, or need to be a "central part" of Google's algorithm. Consider:
1) Why should Google assume, for example, that the domain name "europe-travel-and-tourist-information.com" has more to do with European travel than "ricksteves.com" does? Or that the domain "bestsellers-novels-nonfiction-books.com" has more to do with books than "amazon.com" does? Or that "airline-tickets-airplanes-flight-reservations.com" has more to do with air travel than "orbitz.com" or "airfrance.com" does?
2) Google indexes pages, not domains, so why should it even be looking at domain names?
Keywords in page titles and on-page text are a whole different kettle of fish. They help Google determine what the page is about.
If the Google algorithm is favoring keyword-rich domain names, then Google may well decide to modify the algorithm to prevent artificial manipulation of search results.
Penalizing those domains would be a classic example of an engine penalizing sites for a weakness in their algo.
There's no need to penalize such domains. All Google has to do is ignore keywords in domain names, so that (for example) a catalog page of Jesus dashboard ornaments at jesus-statuettes-and-trinkets.com doesn't get more weight in a "Jesus" search than a Bible page about Jesus at the Electronic Text Center of Virginia.edu.
Keywords in domains is suppoesed to be good for 2 things:
1. Google has weighting of keyword in domain, i.e. widget.com weights more than mysirname.com (or my-sir-name.com). That has no relevancy for determining the content of the page and thus should be giving no credit.
2. Google gives credit to keywords in link tekst (and maybe anchor text) and thats a reason for having keyword rich domains illustrated several times here.
As for what you and I think of long, often hyphenated url's, lets keep it out of the discussion, it's what Google think (supposedly) about the urls in question.
Ad. 1.: I don't have evidence for this, but consensus in this thread (and the whole board) is that it has.
Ad. 2.: A well established WebmasterWorld fact.
Consider this:
Shortage of domains forces longer domain names.
Domains are cheap compared to many other costs of SEO/marketing.
When the quantity of keyword stuffed domain names becomes too high, what action will Google take?
Suggestions mentioned in this thread:
None
penalize hyphens in verious forms: (max. 2 or 3, 3 hyphens= PR-1, 4= PR-2 etc.)
pay no attention to keywords in domains
missing or other possibilities?
In which direction will Google move?
I just bought a cell phone battery from a merchant with 3 hyphens in the domain name. The domain name spells out exactly the sort of products they sell. If I sell pink fuzzy round widgets, pink-fuzzy-round-widgets.com is a great name for my e-commerce business. One look at the domain name and the buyer will know I sell exactly what they want.
perhaps SE should just begin filtering by name length
If it seemed to produce better results, cagey, don't think for a minute that they wouldn't do it.
I don't have SE insider knowledge, but my guess is that the ideal situation is to have at least the first five or ten results be very relevant and free of spam/junk sites. This will keep most searchers happy and coming back for more. The highest ranked sites don't have to be the BEST in absolute terms, and don't have to include all sites of comparable quality, IMO. They just have to be very good and very relevant.
I view the SE algo tweakers like control panel operators - turn this dial a quarter of a turn clockwise, and see how the results look. Still spammy? Try another quarter of a turn, and back off a hair on another dial... If for some reason domain name length seemed to be relevant, they'd put in a knob for it and turn it just to see what happened.
I don't want to seem cynical, but I think it's misguided to expect fairness. I don't think the SEs WANT to be unfair, but they are primarily concerned with the quality of the results. A webmaster may think, "There's no way they can downgrade a site with three hyphens. My site has three hyphens, and it's legitimate, it's content-rich, and visitors love it. Penalizing a hyphenated site makes no more sense than penalizing sites that start with 'q'" The SE engineers are thinking, meanwhile, "Hmmmm... when we subtract a PR point from anthing with three hyphens, eight out of ten searches have the same or better quality results. Let's do it. And let's run a test on those 'q' domains, too, I read at WebmasterWorld that they have 25% more spam than 'z' domains."
If I sell pink fuzzy round widgets, pink-fuzzy-round-widgets.com is a great name for my e-commerce business.- thats for humans.
widgets-widgets-widgets-widgets.com
- thats for robots.
>> All Google has to do is ignore keywords in domain names <<
No problem with that. I suspect they do anyhow, but it would be totally ridiculous to set any sort of penalty.
Go60Guy.... thanks for chipping in. I think it's a general problem on the board and probably with a good percentage of humanity. It's often much easier to destroy something than to build it. That approach rarely leads to long term success though!
Doug Cook from Inktomi said that hyphenated domains were an issue and that they have conducted extensive quality/relevance studies on them. What they found was that overall relevance and page quality dropped off dramatically after two hyphens.
All the panelists seemed to agree that deducting points from a page's overall score for using excessive hypens in the domain name would help them improve the overall quality of their databases.
Will innocent sites who offer quality content from hypenated domains be negatively impacted? Yes, they will. But the overall search experience (in the opinion of the search engines) will improve. And that is simply how algorithmic decisions are made.
It's often much easier to destroy something than to build it. That approach rarely leads to long term success though!
If you look at history, a lot of things has been destroyed because of wars we did not understand. I don't want a website to be destroyed because I did not understand - if I can't figure it out my self - I ask. No reason to make the same mistake twice.
Sometimes you can make out trends for the future from the past, especially if you ask other people with same interests about their views.
The approach to long term success is hard work, original work, and hard work.
This is not the "long domain name inquesition".
Thats interesting info!
P.S. For some reason, I keep hearing the sound of pounding hooves in my head. You know, like that sound a herd of cattle makes when it becomes restless.
And, isn't Google used something like 5 times more than Inktomi? If Google disagrees, this is highly relevant. Plus, my suspicion is that Google actually *wants* less relevant commercial SERPs. This encourages people to click on the Adwords. Google's marketing strategy may not be the same as Inktomi's.
Plus, my suspicion is that Google actually *wants* less relevant commercial SERPs. This encourages people to click on the Adwords.
If your hypothesis is correct, it won't be long until Google begins delivering completely random search results, and then people will HAVE to read he AdWords. :-)
WG what is the Dallas SES show? I thought the comment very interesting, today I actually looked at a couple of sites I was visiting from a search and two of them did have two hyphens in, I agree completely that domains with anymore than 1 or two slip off the relevancy scale. At least the mjority.
Naah...I don't think Google will ever go that far. However, with Adwords being Google's bread and butter, they'd be fools to try and make the commercial SERPs *more* relevant than they are now, and thus make Adwords less useful.
So I am sure that Google will try and keep trying to give the best results out there as they know it will increase their profits.
After all, there are only so many productive business models on the web, that is a latively fixed number what is most definitely not fixed however is the amount of suppliers and websites of these businesses.
What they found was that overall relevance and page quality dropped off dramatically after two hyphens
Does this mean that if you have for example:
2 hyphens you're ok?
or
More than 2 is considered spam technique?
or
More than 1 hyphen is dangerous?
Disagree entirely, Google has to bring users the best results possible, that is what brings in the eyeballs, and that is why there are advertisers.
100% agreement with you Visit_Thailand. Google's success is based on relevant SERPS and will always remain so IMHO. Hyphens or no hyphens.
I find that quite a few domain names 10 letters or longer seem to be spammy (with or without hyphens), perhaps SE should just begin filtering by name length on the theory that shorter is better...
Ummm, what about sites like britishvirginislands.com? Its the name of a country. How can this possibly be considered spammy? No, I don't think filtering by length is a viable option.
I think limiting the number of hyphens is the best solution. That will be up to the powers that be within the various search engines to determine. One or two seems fine to me. Three is pushing it and four is getting silly.
But if you filter the domains by number of hyphens first and then take a look at other seo techniques that are used at this sites, you could end up with a good list of worthless trashable sites without kicking quality-more-than-1-hyphen-sites.
That's one option. I'm sure there are any number of SEO techniques, such as heavy crosslinking between sites, that may not be penalty fodder in themselves but can trigger a penalty if used in combination with other "grey area" techniques. There's no reason why multiple-hyphen domain nams couldn't be added to the list of techniques that trigger a closer look as opposed to an automatic penalty.
I still think it would be easier and more practical to simply ignore keywords in domain names. This would remove the artificial advantage that (for example) an affiliate site called nikon-canon-digital-cameras.com would have over quality content sites like popphoto.com, photo.net, dpreview.com, or steves-digicams.com in searches on "nikon digital cameras" or "canon digital cameras." The bottom line for users would be higher-quality SERPs.
Of course, a search engine might choose to ignore keywords in domain names and still use multiple hyphens as a "take a closer look" filter, simply because multiple hyphens may indicate an attempt to spam even if they aren't effective.
(Please note that I am NOT advocating penalties simply for the use of multiple hyphens in domain names.)
