Brace yourselves: Is Google really about to F exact match URL's in the A??

[JMOT]

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-keyword-domains-13125.html

A new piece on SEOroundtable basically says you'd better start linkbuilding properly on those keywords and not just relying on the exact match benefit else you are in for a spanking come update time!

Been in the post for a long time this one. Not looking forward to it but what u gonna do huh?!

 

[DarkSky]

your title is a bit misleading, google will not do anything of the sort to exact match domains, to suggest it will penalise exact match domains is simply wrong. Although I guess you could take being fucked in the arse in a positive light. Oh yeah baby.

Cutts is simply *suggesting* they *might* lessen the amount of weight given to a site for keywords in a domain, they will still 100% benefit any site, and like any part of googles algorithm, exact amounts will not be known.

 

[DomainManagement]

would that be create a holistic link strategy, if so great effort = reward

lets hope mine and all yours are in a position to benefit


up the org.uk`s keyword heavy domains . it has been proven in ppc that

putting the keyword / keyword phrase in the link increased CTR

therefore google would be at odds with its own thought process

higher ctr`s = more earning potential for Google and therefore

if you aim is to be a quality developer then this helps us a lot and improves the value of our digital assets

a the keyword heavy domain website has well structured on page optimisation

good original content with quality links and being refreshed with good content

and engaging features and design along with all the web 2.0 associated satellite social media pages pages linking back

Google has to give it priority because of its high likelihoods of the searcher clicking this site due to the relevancy

in the searcher`s thought thus Google more time to get that potential click

a lot of brand would confuse a searcher the there fore not providing the user

with search they require therefore loss of audience

if they were got to do it they would trial it in a area and analyse the data

before taking any real action and i am sure we would get wind of such a

happening

but as always quality is king just my thoughts and observations

and thanks to frank sharing wise words be patient and think about it when these things come round

 

[wb]

to suggest it will penalise exact match domains is simply wrong

I didn't interpret what was posted as exact match domains being 'penalised', more that they will simply be given less weighting. For many websites which are heavily reliant on the exact match bonus, this could indeed 'F them in the A' though.

 

[pugyrob]

I am fairly sure this happened about a month or so ago. Certainly from people i know and own sites, there was a slight drop across the board for exact match terms.

Had to happen as the weight was ridiculous.That said they will still have advantages beyond the exact match boost

1) clickthrough rate on organic search listings potentially, people tend to click more on the phrase they typed in when they see it

2) PPC reduced costs in many cases

3) more freedom to link using exact match term, ie more lenience for the amount of times you can link to your exact targetted keyword, as it is after all the domain too.

4) directory listings and natural links to you using your keywords

Anyone who relies solely on any seo method will come unstuck in most Google changes

 

[retired_member34]

Seems I saw some evidence that might point to this, but only in that some brandables (non exact match) suddenly had a small boost across the board!

 

[DomainManagement]

Big G users spend on average 7- 9 seconds using there intereface

so that's what big G user expect

how does any one think they would react to having to make more clicks through

brands , bail out written all over it

Don`t kill the Goose that laid the golden click

 

[newguy]

Bricks were shat.

 

[Frog]

The far bigger problem coming that everyone in UK seems to be ignoring is that the big Farmer/Panda updates that rolled out in USA recently haven't hit UK... yet. I can't wait till they do to be honest.


If you're sitting on exact match domains that are not super premium, I think you're going to be screwed. It might just be all talk, but I think they are going to dial down the benefit they obviously enjoy in Google right now.

Its time to sell, sell, sell if you're sitting on a load of garbage .org.uk's, or 3 word .co.uk's. Either that or develop them to a level where it doesn't matter.

Rather than out other peoples sites, I'll use some of my own as examples.

Floridaholidays.org - a higher end phrase in the travel market but not on a good extension. This needs to be sold or developed. Didn't get a good enough offer when I tried the former, so hired a writer to go the latter. Will start link building - the exact match will still allow me to the indirect benefit of good anchor texts.

Searchengineoptimisation.org - high search phrase in a money industry, bad extension again. This was ranking off the strength of the exact match, I guess in a way it still is at least partly. At this point I think its past that - pr6 and loads of good links, if the exact match benefit goes away, that site isn't going anywhere, imo.

discountvouchers.org - another decent phrase, bad extension. Took a different approach here and rebranded as Coupon Croc :lol: The traffic for "discount vouchers" as a phrase was bordering on worthless anyway, and the traffic to the site as a whole was going well so time to choose to be a brand rather than an seo play.

So 3 sites, 3 approaches, all because of the changes apparently coming (both exact match and Panda). Would be interested to hear what anyone else is doing (or done) - although I suspect a lot will be doing absolutely nothing and hoping for the best (which might very well turn out to be the right approach!)

 

[DomainManagement]

I don`t really agree , if the site is relevant and exact match its more attractive to Google and the path they take in there adwords algorithm its a method that earns them billions in connection to there search behaviour response

information quick , all there asking is for the low quality property be down graded
as there value is dropping due to there connect quality ,

all Gogle is asking is to raise quality values to make it more relevant to customers expectations and deliver quality relevant engaging connect with multiple channels if interaction for the user content rich and demanding inter activity

 

[newguy]

I don`t really agree , if the site is relevant and exact match its more attractive to Google and the path they take in there adwords algorithm its a method that earns them billions in connection to there search behaviour response

information quick , all there asking is for the low quality property be down graded
as there value is dropping due to there connect quality ,

all Gogle is asking is to raise quality values to make it more relevant to customers expectations and deliver quality relevant engaging connect with multiple channels if interaction for the user content rich and demanding inter activity

I think you're probably right. Sites rankly purely on the power of a domain name will tank if the exact match value is turned down even slightly. With more established sites that's unlikely to happen. I don't think they'll remove the advantage altogether, because that wouldn't really be sensible in my view.

 

[Frog]

I think you're probably right. Sites rankly purely on the power of a domain name will tank if the exact match value is turned down even slightly. With more established sites that's unlikely to happen. I don't think they'll remove the advantage altogether, because that wouldn't really be sensible in my view.

I'm not sure if he's right or wrong as I couldn't decipher what he was talking about... but I think it would make sense to kill the exact match benefit. They already get the benefit indirectly from the anchor text being aligned with the keyword and that should be enough.

Ideally they would set the bar higher before any exact match benefit kicks in. So it needs to have x trust and y quality links in Google then it gets the benefit, otherwise its treated like a normal domain. There is just too many crap sites ranking on .org.uk domains that turn out to be horrible, thin affiliate sites.

 

[newguy]

I'm not sure if he's right or wrong as I couldn't decipher what he was talking about... but I think it would make sense to kill the exact match benefit. They already get the benefit indirectly from the anchor text being aligned with the keyword and that should be enough.

Ideally they would set the bar higher before any exact match benefit kicks in. So it needs to have x trust and y quality links in Google then it gets the benefit, otherwise its treated like a normal domain. There is just too many crap sites ranking on .org.uk domains that turn out to be horrible, thin affiliate sites.

I had thought about stating the part in bold in my last message . Maybe that's the route they will go. I do think that an exact match benefit of some sort will stick around. Without it you might get very strong sites outranking official sites, and problems like that. Exact match URLS, attached to reasonably successful sites do deserve some kind of benefit I think. It indicates additional relevancy when combined with other factors. Admittedly alone, it doesn't always mean a great deal, which is why exact match affiliate sites with a few inbound links, will likely be taken out so matter what the specifics of the change are.

From the video it makes it sound like they're going to make the change across the board, but then I wouldn't expect them to go into detail about the changes, so who knows. Time will tell.

 

[jwm]

The far bigger problem coming that everyone in UK seems to be ignoring is that the big Farmer/Panda updates that rolled out in USA recently haven't hit UK... yet. I can't wait till they do to be honest.

I am not sure Panda will have that large an impact in the UK. As i understand it, Panda was designed to kill the long tail results from large sites full of crap content that were ranking due to a combination of internal linking and the overall authority of the site. Most of the time the long tail results that dropped in the serps had little to no external backlinks - which was why immediately after it Mahola started paying paying people to tweet links to their long tail.

If you're sitting on exact match domains that are not super premium, I think you're going to be screwed. It might just be all talk, but I think they are going to dial down the benefit they obviously enjoy in Google right now.

Its time to sell, sell, sell if you're sitting on a load of garbage .org.uk's, or 3 word .co.uk's. Either that or develop them to a level where it doesn't matter.

I disagree with this, Matt Cutts stated google were talking about 'turning the dial down' on exact match domains not eliminating the benefit. So the benefit will still be there, as will the benefit from being able to use the name as the anchor text without setting off a filter about overuse on a particular anchor term.

Personally I think Google have an issue changing the exact match benefit as exact match can also equal brand name (big or small) in the serps and Google will always want to return a brand as a relevant return in a serch.

Unless they always want to return the same 500 big brands for every search, they have to rely on the domain name as an identifier. For example, if I search for fred the plumber and his domain is fredtheplumber.org.uk - if google don't return this domain in the search results for me then their results are irrelevant and have failed for that search. Fred will probably never have a bunch of quality links to his site, so how other than exact match would google make sure his site appears in their search results? And that to me is the problem they have.

So 3 sites, 3 approaches, all because of the changes apparently coming (both exact match and Panda).

There are a few contradictions in what you are doing and what you are saying!!

You say sell exact match domains that are not super premium, as you think owners are going to be screwed, but are developing Florida holidays because no-one will pay what you want for it. Following your own advice shouldn't you just take the hit, sell it cheaper and get out?

Discountvouchers you have made a brand - but you have made it a brand because the term 'discount vouchers' isn't bringing you any traffic anyway. So the exact match benefit was irrelevant in this case. I presume your US site will follow the same branding? If yes, then between this and the traffic being worthless for the phrase 'discount vouchers' then you would have made this change regardless of Panda or exact match!

Meanwhile the exact match that is presumably worth something -searchengineoptimisation.org - you are keeping rather than branding. Which suggest you still think the exact match will be worth something in a very competitve serp result regardless of what google do.

 

[Frog]

There are a few contradictions in what you are doing and what you are saying!!

You say sell exact match domains that are not super premium, as you think owners are going to be screwed, but are developing Florida holidays because no-one will pay what you want for it. Following your own advice shouldn't you just take the hit, sell it cheaper and get out?

Either sell it and get out, or build a site that ranks to the level where exact match bonus going away won't hurt it. If I build it now it will still rank based on the exact match. Once it ranks it'll make money, just keep reinvesting that money and layering on more and more links. If I wait till there is no exact match bonus (or a limited one) even getting off the ground in the first place will be hard. I think there is still a window of opportunity to build exact matches right now (with the view of either selling them once they rank, or reinvesting their profits once they rank to make sure they continue to do so).

Discountvouchers you have made a brand - but you have made it a brand because the term 'discount vouchers' isn't bringing you any traffic anyway. So the exact match benefit was irrelevant in this case. I presume your US site will follow the same branding? If yes, then between this and the traffic being worthless for the phrase 'discount vouchers' then you would have made this change regardless of Panda or exact match!

I don't think you can call a .org keyword phrase a brand when another voucher site is on the better extension of that domain... I've built a profitable SEO play, not a brand really. The only reason the USA site is going to be "coupon croc" is because I changed the UK one. If I didn't think brands were going to get move love from Google in the search results in the future now I'd have stayed on the .org. The reasons for these changes are only partly to do with recent updates and more to do with traffic to that phrase, but still played a part in the decision.

Meanwhile the exact match that is presumably worth something -searchengineoptimisation.org - you are keeping rather than branding. Which suggest you still think the exact match will be worth something in a very competitve serp result regardless of what google do.

I think with the level of link building that site has, removing exact match benefit won't harm it - it'll still rank in the top 3. Its got too many links, with targeted anchor texts, for anything else to happen. I should rebrand that site too - it just doesn't make enough % of my income for me to deal with it, and I don't think its rankings will be hit anyway so I'm not going to bother. The safer long term bet (I think) would be to rebrand this one also.

Look at the .co.uk in the same niche there - its ranking 4th and its got next to no links. Their tagline might be "the only way is up" but if they don't do something drastic and quickly, they'll need to change "up" to "down"


There is no way that site is even in the top 20 without the exact match benefit... they need to either sell the thing just now or use the profits its obviously making to take it past the level of the exact match benefit being removed being able to harm them... they just seem to be content to coast by on that bonus for now. Maybe they don't believe the exact match benefit is going anywhere. Maybe they're right, who knows? I guess thats what makes it fun

 

[jwm]

I don't think you can call a .org keyword phrase a brand when another voucher site is on the better extension of that domain... I've built a profitable SEO play, not a brand really. The only reason the USA site is going to be "coupon croc" is because I changed the UK one. If I didn't think brands were going to get move love from Google in the search results in the future now I'd have stayed on the .org. The reasons for these changes are only partly to do with recent updates and more to do with traffic to that phrase, but still played a part in the decision.

Frog -I think we are talking at cross purposes about your discout vouchers site - when I said you had made it a brand I meant you had turned it into the brand couponcroc - i wasn't suggesting discoutvouchers.org was a brand.

The part in bold was exactly my point. You mention Panda and exact match as being huge issues and originally state the change to become the brand couponcroc was made as a result. But actually other factors were more important in your decision on this domain.

 

[Frog]

Sure, Panda and the other related issues are not the main reason for my voucher code changes. They are going to be the main reason behind me either selling some other domains, building them or aggressively promoting them.


So does anything think Cutts is just lying and is not going to do anything at all with these domains? It wouldn't be the first time, but I think too many lower quality exact matches are harming some search results (I know, because I put them there ). The search results would be improved if every .org.uk not only lost their exact match benefit, but suffered a 20% penalty on top of that, but thats an argument for another thread...

 

[jwm]

So does anything think Cutts is just lying and is not going to do anything at all with these domains? It wouldn't be the first time, but I think too many lower quality exact matches are harming some search results (I know, because I put them there . The search results would be improved if every .org.uk not only lost their exact match benefit, but suffered a 20% penalty on top of that, but thats an argument for another thread...

I think they would like to do something but are obviously struggling for a solution otherwise they would have done it by now

Not only do they have the issue of minor brands - the fred the plumber type issue I mentioned above but also they have a relevancy issue.

If I run a site selling say pink TVs on the domain pinkstvs.org.uk and I have pages which compare the price of each model of pink TV across all UK retailers with aff links to them all (so a thin aff site by most definitions). Is that site more or less relevant than a search result which is a pink TV on sale at John Lewis? Personally as a searcher for pink tvs I would rather have a look at the org.uk site first

 

[Frog]

If I run a site selling say pink TVs on the domain pinkstvs.org.uk and I have pages which compare the price of each model of pink TV across all UK retailers with aff links to them all (so a thin aff site by most definitions). Is that site more or less relevant than a search result which is a pink TV on sale at John Lewis? Personally as a searcher for pink tvs I would rather have a look at the org.uk site first

If the site doesn't have any value add then its just an annoyance, an extra click and wasting time between the search engine and the end destination. Whether Google will see a price comparison on its own as value add, I'm not sure. You might need to go deeper than that - user generated reviews, discount codes, high quality photos or something. Videos reviews maybe. Ie anything that all the cookie cutter affiliate spam sites aren't doing.

I think the longer term outlook for Pink TV's in the search results would be both John Lewis and bigbrandcomparisonsite.co.uk/pink-tvs/ outranking a small comparison site on a specific .org.uk. If anyones game is building lots of small comparison sites on exact match domains, I think a safer bet is building one large site with all the products as sections.

 

[jwm]

If the site doesn't have any value add then its just an annoyance, an extra click and wasting time between the search engine and the end destination. Whether Google will see a price comparison on its own as value add, I'm not sure. You might need to go deeper than that - user generated reviews, discount codes, high quality photos or something. Videos reviews maybe. Ie anything that all the cookie cutter affiliate spam sites aren't doing.

I think the longer term outlook for Pink TV's in the search results would be both John Lewis and bigbrandcomparisonsite.co.uk/pink-tvs/ outranking a small comparison site on a specific .org.uk. If anyones game is building lots of small comparison sites on exact match domains, I think a safer bet is building one large site with all the products as sections.

I would say, for the hypothetical pink tv site the price comparison and the fact is lists a number of models is value add. In fact I would argue it's more valuable than the John Lewis page you would want to see in the long term serps - which would probably be a generic manufacturer description and a price for one pink TV model - that is ranking on the authority of the root domain.

For the bigbrandcomparisonsite I agree there is no difference the 2 sites both offer the same thing. So to flip the argument - why should the bigbrandcomparisonsite rank above the exact match in the long term just because it has more money (or authority as google likes to call it )? They both offer the same value to the end user in this example.

I am not disagreeing that as a development path the safer option is building a large authority site. But just showing that if google follow this route of penalising exact match they will keep returning the same sites over and over again for any product search. Not sure that is in their or the searchers best interest.

Sorry if anyone does happens to own a pink tv price comparison site, was just a hypothetical example