Google and exact match domain news

[BST]

Hi,
I just bumped into this article: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/11/11/google-has-internal-debate-about-content-farms-as-spam

"Google is also looking at domain match and whether that should really be ranking you higher, Matt Cuts said."

 

[Bailey]

It's always going to be a constantly changing playing field, only the newest entrants believe otherwise.

The longer-term game may indeed be in developing a specific niche or focusing on an individual site. keeps things interesting though

 

[BST]

The idea behind my post is not SEO but mainly that this will influence domain prices.

 

[philiporchard]

Great generic domains certainly have value currently because of their SEO potential, but they offer so much more than that. They are often easy to remember, brand-able, and the very best will carry some authority, in that they are the top name for their niche.

For example you'd be confident that CreditCards.co.uk was reputable, partly for the weight that the domain has. Not only that, but it's easy to remember, and yes, currently the name has some influence on the SEO.

I'd be surprised if domains suddenly had no influence on the SEO. As has been mentioned on here before, it wouldn't be ideal to search for Tescos and find 'Sainsbury's showing up first in the search results.

 

[GreyWing]

The question isn't can google changed the weight it gives to exact keyword url's, the question is can google change it and keep the visitors coming to google.

If people can't find the sites that they are looking for then they will go elsewhere. A lot of people have a rough idea of the site they want to find, maybe they have been there in the past etc but can't remember the name 100%. So google can't just go throwing their weight about.

There are already law suits going through the EU about google fixing search results. Imagine if someone can succesfully prove that customers were searching for them and google was sending them elsewhere. It hasn't happened as of yetc because the people who suffer usually are small web owners. If google makes a change to the url system and bigger fish get hurt, then maybe we might start seeing a few cases going through the courts.

I like the idea of taking weight away from those spammy links though and of course the automated content

 

[namealot]

There’s always speculation about what google will do is doing keeps it in the game... My favorite atm is that they collect your DNA from electromagnetic frequency emitted buy your DNA everyone’s is unique apparently???. There doing dna survey from space woo hoo don’t you just love it ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n37kMaIfRvw

 

[Bailey]

The idea behind my post is not SEO but mainly that this will influence domain prices.

That may be - But, I can assure you, SEO is the reason behind Google looking at the metrics.

In the 'big picture' SEO and domain prices are intrinsically linked but, as greywing, Phil and others will correctly point out, the tie-in works at different levels depending on the nature of the domain.

Those with long-tail descriptives are hopefully making Hay all the while the time is good. A domain that a Company or business would be happy to be associated with or seen as usable in a number of different scenarios is going to maintain its value. In these days of electronic communication take a small step back and actually look at a domain in print - that should give you some indicator why certain domain name metrics maintain a positive value, whilst others can be subject to a limiting time-scale.

I'm never happy to see an extreme example used as potential representation in any given scenario ( even when i do it) It smells of depesperate rather than realistic prediction/defending in a lot of cases. Google and any search engine worth it's salt has the ability to make just about any change to it's weighting that it wishes, All I'm trying to point out, it is and always will be an evolving game. Long term predictions based on previous performance is for the very brave or foolish.

Will Google continue to make mistakes - of course, The recent Chinese search debacle was a classic - Talk about "not having someone on the Ground" - I'm not sure in that instance that Google even had someone 'Above -it'

 

[anthony]

Googles' job is to provide credible results which are as close to what the searcher is looking for as possible. If some oddly named company in the outback makes and sells the best and most popular 'superwidgets' there are, then Google should be expected to rank that companys' web site over superwidgets.com in every search. We all like the idea of having exact match domain names, but that's because the current set-up has still not fully evolved. Yes, exacts are easier to remember etc, but the ultimate Google/Bing search results should make exact match domains irrelevant. That might be painful to hear for some, but if you are a search engine, exact matches should not even be on the consideration list! 10 years from now, search engines will be taking a whole load of other background information into consideration which the searcher won't even be thinking about.

 

[BST]

philiporchard: We are not talking about the other benefits an exact match delivers like reputation, easy remembering, type-ins and etc. We are talking about pure SE algorithms.

The way I see it looking thought the search engine eyes is that - exact match domains like CreditCards.co.uk are very rare and expensive. If the domains costs 200k pounds you are very unlikely to start trying to fool the search engines with stuff like link spam for example. On the other hand you can buy 1000s of throw away domains for $5. Also there are only few (3-4) possible exact match domains. This is just another mechanism implemented into the algorithm to lower the SE spam.

Also the example with Tescos Sainsbury's isn't exactly correct because this are brand names not generic terms like "credit cards". For "credit cards" there can be and most of the time there are a lot more useful sites. It's very rare that the exact match is the best destination.

namealot: this is not pure speculation. It comes form the head of the Google spam team Matt Cuts.

Again we are not talking about the value of a generic domain name here, it's not that the point. We are talking about pure search engine algorithms and the logic behind them (and the consequences they may bring).

Back in the days, it was logical to implement exact match domains into the algorithms. In the beginning they delivered. But again with time, people get the hang of it and start to over do it and it lost some of it's relevance. So my prediction is exact match domains will be not removed but lowered as a ranking factor from the search engines.

If/when people start to blow this up and we start to see less and less exact matches among the top 10 rankings, this will have a negative effect on the domain prices. Especially on the low-mid price domains.

 

[doodlebug]

I think a generic will be very effective in terms of SEO as long as you use the correct keywords on your title and description and have plenty of upto date relevant content.

eg, when searching for tesco then tesco.com would have all of these factors where as sainsburys wouldn't.

It's goodbye single pagers and holding pages and hello useful proper sites.

 

[JMOT]

Why all the fuss?? So those sites with a handful of questionable quality links surfing high on exact match bonus will just have to buy a few more links and actually build some credible site authority...

Exact match domain will always have the greatest consumer relevance. This is proven fact thanks to people like Edwin. You think Google doesn't know this and wants to piss users off?

This debate is going to rumble along for a long time.