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

[newguy]

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

My pink TV empire... in ruins! j/k

Since we're talking about exact match domains, is there a consensus on hyphenated exact match domains? Do people think they have:

- the same benefit non-hyphenated ones
- some benefit
- no benefit

I've definitley noticed some difference. I'd tend to go with 'some benefit'. Maybe non hyphenated ones will be dialled down to that level.

 

[dougs]

discountvouchers.org

Shame Frog

I wanted you to build it out more and then people come back and type in dv.co.uk or dv.com

Doug

 

[Frog]

Shame Frog

I wanted you to build it out more and then people come back and type in dv.co.uk or dv.com

Doug

The problem I think was they'd be going all over the place - its a 2 word phrase meaning discounts, they'll be trying voucher codes, discount vouchers, discount codes, etc etc. My own mum forgot the url and ended up on another site - vouchercodes.com ! Not even the right extension or phrase

I guess vouchercodes.co.uk, yourself, vouchercodes.com are losing typeins to each other but it'll probably even out. It must be brutal for promotionalcodes.org.uk - horrible extension to have a big site on...

 

[retired_member33]

Has anyone ever checked search volumes for vouchercodes.co.uk, discountvouchers.co.uk and all? That might tell something about where type in traffic might go?

 

[Blossom]

My pink TV empire... in ruins! j/k

Since we're talking about exact match domains, is there a consensus on hyphenated exact match domains? Do people think they have:

- the same benefit non-hyphenated ones
- some benefit
- no benefit

I've definitley noticed some difference. I'd tend to go with 'some benefit'. Maybe non hyphenated ones will be dialled down to that level.

Rand Fishkin's view is that hyphenated exact match domains don't rank as well but still get a bonus. He's uploaded a graph somewhere but can't find the link...

 

[Frog]

Hyphenated domains don't get any benefit at all... the only plus point is the indirect benefit from links.

If you submit creditcards.co.uk, credit-cards.co.uk and davescreditcards.co.uk to Yahoo Dir, Business.com etc you're going to end up with "credit cards" anchors for the first 2 and "daves credit cards" on the other. So a hyphenated domain could still be useful that way.

 

[newguy]

Rand Fishkin's view is that hyphenated exact match domains don't rank as well but still get a bonus. He's uploaded a graph somewhere but can't find the link...

Thanks, could find the graph, but found this:

Rand Fishkin shared the results of some super cool research he has done on Google and Bing. The study looked only at first page results. Rand analyzed the correlation significance between different SEO elements (such as the value of h1 tags) and rankings. (A correlation significance of 0 would mean there is absolutely no relationship between the two variables, and a score of 1 would indicate a perfect correlation).

The first element Rand studied was query matching in the domain name (i.e.- including a keyword of focus in the domain name). Google showed a higher correlation for exact match hyphenated domains. Both engines showed extremely high correlations in cases of completely exact match domain names.

How about the effect of using keywords in a subdomain? There seems to be some correlation for Google, but almost NO correlation at all for Bing. The conclusion here is that keywords in the subdomain are not as important as keywords in the root domain. And Bing may be rewarding keywords in the subdomain less than it used to.

 

[Frog]

You are making a big mistake if you just blindly follow what rand says... his MO is wrap some vague opinion up as fact, dress it up with a graph and a picture of a robot and watch the links and traffic flow in...

Works well for seomoz... not so well for the people following the advice.

 

[newguy]

You are making a big mistake if you just blindly follow what rand says... his MO is wrap some vague opinion up as fact, dress it up with a graph and a picture of a robot and watch the links and traffic flow in...

Works well for seomoz... not so well for the people following the advice.

Just posting it here as a follow up to Blossoms post. It does fall broadly in line with my experiences with fairly newly registered hyhenated and unhyphenated domains with few inbound links, but of course, it's good to have a variety of opinions on these matters. Would be good to see the thoughts from other members too, as I would think it would be something that most members hold a view on.

 

[Blossom]

You are making a big mistake if you just blindly follow what rand says... his MO is wrap some vague opinion up as fact, dress it up with a graph and a picture of a robot and watch the links and traffic flow in...

Works well for seomoz... not so well for the people following the advice.

I don't blindly follow what he says (or anyone, for that matter). I merely pointed out that he said it. The only way to succeed at SEO is to try things out for yourself and see what works and what doesn't for your particular situation. Reading up on as much as you can and getting information from as many sources as possible, even if they conflict, is the first step.

 

[namdas]

I don't blindly follow what he says (or anyone, for that matter). I merely pointed out that he said it. The only way to succeed at SEO is to try things out for yourself and see what works and what doesn't for your particular situation. Reading up on as much as you can and getting information from as many sources as possible, even if they conflict, is the first step.

You're absolutely right, testing is the best way - but having watched Rand speak on Friday I'm pretty certain he doesn't test anything but simply repeats what he's heard elsewhere. Some of the examples he used to back up his theories in the talk were tenuous at best. Charlie Sheen tweets about needing an intern and the page he tweets now ranks #1 for 'charlie shen intern' so therefore tweets get you #1 rankings - rocket science, clearly! Given its not a high competition keyword and that his tweet will undoubtedly have lead to links going to have to say correlation != causation.

Indeed, he doesn't actually do seo any more, he just sells software to help others these days..

 

[Blossom]

You're absolutely right, testing is the best way - but having watched Rand speak on Friday I'm pretty certain he doesn't test anything but simply repeats what he's heard elsewhere. Some of the examples he used to back up his theories in the talk were tenuous at best. Charlie Sheen tweets about needing an intern and the page he tweets now ranks #1 for 'charlie shen intern' so therefore tweets get you #1 rankings - rocket science, clearly! Given its not a high competition keyword and that his tweet will undoubtedly have lead to links going to have to say correlation != causation.

Indeed, he doesn't actually do seo any more, he just sells software to help others these days..

Yeah..I was there too. I don't agree with the twitter stuff as it stands at the moment - I think it's more wishful thinking on behalf of SEOs for the most part. As a secondary effect, sure, but not directly unless you're involved in news stuff at the moment.

 

[JMOT]

Turned into a pretty interesting thread this one.

It wouldnt shock me if they have already tested an algo change like this in a smaller market like the UK first as we have more exact match extensions than most countries to play around with...

IMHO you are not losing anything by holding onto your exact domains and just waiting to see what happens here.

At end of the day, right now, if you just put a few links into an exact match site and hope it ranks page 1 for anything seriously or semi competitive you are quite deluded and deserve a spanking. You still have to make an effort seo wise and user experience driven.....

Links are links and you need lots of them to make money in anything worth making money from.

Google not counting backlinks.... now that would be something to worry about but would pretty much unhinge any search engines business model so fat chance of that changing much anytime soon regardless of social signals and other noise

 

[Frog]

Turned into a pretty interesting thread this one.

It wouldnt shock me if they have already tested an algo change like this in a smaller market like the UK first as we have more exact match extensions than most countries to play around with...

There is zero chance of them having rolled it out (even temporarily) in UK, Canada, France, Germany etc already as loads of exact matches dropping overnight would certainly have been noticed almost instantly.

IMHO you are not losing anything by holding onto your exact domains and just waiting to see what happens here.

Well if you sit on your exact matches a bit longer and Google come and say "we've now removed the exact match benefit" you have lost something for sure... some domains will be worth a lot with or without the bonus but look at creditcards.org.uk selling for £25k or whatever it was... remove the exact match bonus and you're lucky if thats a 5k domain.

 

[JMOT]

Lee I didnt say rolled out, I said tested

 

[Frog]

Yes but something of that nature would be very hard to test without it being noticed at all. Its not something you could test in one small niche, you would need to roll it out, get feedback then roll it back. Do it on Google Zimbabwe and the data won't be accurate... you would need to test it on a developed market - probably UK or Canada.


Is anyone with large portfolios of 2-3 word exact matches starting to panic yet?

 

[jwm]

Is anyone with large portfolios of 2-3 word exact matches starting to panic yet?

Nope, if you remove exact match bonus you will have brand name carnage. Good SEOs would be outranking brands everywhere in the serps for their own name - even google wouldn't want to deal with the fall out from that

 

[Blossom]

Nope, if you remove exact match bonus you will have brand name carnage. Good SEOs would be outranking brands everywhere in the serps for their own name - even google wouldn't want to deal with the fall out from that

I don't think they would remove it altogether, because it would be more likely to show favouritism for one brand over another.

But the 'brand fallout' wouldn't be that bad as tons of people don't try to rank for an existing brand name, and even in the case of resellers and such brands have bigger budgets for SEO and would react.

 

[jwm]

I don't think they would remove it altogether, because it would be more likely to show favouritism for one brand over another.

But the 'brand fallout' wouldn't be that bad as tons of people don't try to rank for an existing brand name, and even in the case of resellers and such brands have bigger budgets for SEO and would react.

I am M&S, you are secondary retail brand (can't think of one of the top of my head). You just lost the exact bonus for your name. I have very deep pockets to go after that phrase/name and take your traffic

Or since Frog was mentioning org.uk, how about practically every charity in the UK since that is their extension of choice. Most charities wouldn't have much of a budget if any for seo. So if they lose the exact match bonus how do Google ensure they rank for their name?

 

[Frog]

I am M&S, you are secondary retail brand (can't think of one of the top of my head). You just lost the exact bonus for your name. I have very deep pockets to go after that phrase/name and take your traffic

You'd be wasting your money because if you somehow managed it (and you're talking about as likely as getting hit by lighting twice or winning the Euro Millions!) Google would just at the very least manually demote you for that phrase and at worst they'd penalise you for the obvious link buying that must have went on to let BHS rank for "marks & spencer".

Or since Frog was mentioning org.uk, how about practically every charity in the UK since that is their extension of choice. Most charities wouldn't have much of a budget if any for seo. So if they lose the exact match bonus how do they ensure they rank for their name?

Exact match benefit or not, most of the charities will still rank for their names as nearly all of their links have those names in them. It would be impossible for anyone to come in and take the ranking for "Oxfam" or "NSPCA" (or any small charity either). The only ones that you could actually manage it for, wouldn't show any sort of financial return anyway. You'd spend far more ranking it than you could ever hope to get back.

I think from Googles point of view, by far the best solution is to avoid the above by working out what a brand is and what a searched phrase is, and remove the exact match benefit from the latter. Oxfam.org.uk = exact match benefit. HomeInsurance.org.uk = no benefit at all. It would be really simple to create a few rules that would be 99% accurate in splitting those 2 categories of sites.