Domain Names and SEO

What effect do domain names have in the search engines?

[mikem72]

This might be kind of an obfuscated issue.

What effect does the domain name itself have on SE?

For example if you had exactly the same content at

widgets.com
123456789blablablawidgets.com
***widgets.com
bluewidgets.com
toymaker.com
blablabla.com

for testing purposes assume the content only had "widgets" as keywords and stuff

If the search was "blue widgets" would you tend to get bluewidgets.com

would "*** widgets" tend to give you ***widgets.com

would "widgets tend to give you widgets.com

See where im going with this line of thought?

[edited by: pageoneresults at 3:45 am (utc) on Dec. 24, 2002]
[edit reason] I thought star (*) widgets would be more appropriate. ;) [/edit]

[fathom]

Difficult to say really.

On site content being similar (e.g. other domains without a keyword in the domain such as bob.com) off page/domain link anchors would be the deciding factor.

That and help from the quality of the links (PageRank).

With queried keyword in the domain -- off site link anchors tend to use the domain name <a href="www.keyword.com">keyword.com</a> thus adding weight and therefore higher relevancy.

The domain name itself adds a little weight but can rank below non-keyword-based domains if more sites link to non-keyword domain (and using better anchors).

[tigger]

I'm still seeing heavy stuffed keyword domains doing well, link anchors being a major factor

[Jack_Frost]

I just got a #2 ranking for a fairly competitive single word because I had one of the only optimized sites with the keyword in the domain. The domain was hyphenated like www.plastic-widgets.com. I expected to get plastic widgets, but I ended up getting widgets too.

Obviously, with so many algorithms and different competitive envrionments, there is no rule. However, if given a new site, I almost always go with an SEO url which is one of their key phrases (usually hyphenated) and then do a 401 server re-direct from their promotional url (www.abcmanufacturing.com).

[fathom]

Congradulation Jack_Frost but once is not a very good sampling of the potential. A single try and failure means 50/50 - that's not very good odds.

billybob.com could easily be #1 for widgets and without any SEO attempt what-so-ever.

Non-profit organizations prove this time & time again.