Exact Match V Broad Match - Why do people generally ask for exact match stats ?

[domsaleuk]

I have a question regarding exact match verses broad match or even phrase match. Why do people on this forum more often than not ask for exact match when looking to purchase names? This makes little sense to me and personally I do not think that exact match is a good way to assign a value to a name – surely broad match is a much better figure to look at in terms of how much value is assigned to a name.

I understand that it may be because people just want to park the names on parking platforms as I guess exact match gives an indication of what the type in traffic might be. I also understand if people are just looking to create one page sites as exact match will in theory give you the opportunity of getting traffic for the exact term from the first page of search engines. However both parked pages and one page sites are something that Google assigns little value to and may even penalise. Google clamped down on one page sites being used as landing pages / jump pages/gateway pages many years ago and it is a well known fact that Google likes sites with a fair amount of unique content (in fact the more the better) so in this sense one page sites would not be looked upon well. Most recently Google announced that they are discontinuing their hosted domains product within Adsense in April – so why the fixation with exact match? I am really very puzzled and would be keen to be enlightened.

What I don’t understand is the following (a) if people are looking buy a domain in order to generate PPC and other types of revenue from a domain purchase, given the points raised above, why would they want to look at exact match? Surely broad match has to be a better figure to look at for anyone considering to produce anything more than a one page site (b) if a person is not buying a domain to generate revenue from it but is instead buying a domain for future “value” purposes then again I would have thought that broad match was a vital ingredient in the potential value. Broad match gives an indication of how much scope there is to drive traffic to the site via natural search and /or PPC methods if it is developed properly, and I would have thought that this should have a direct influence on the value of the domain as it is a good indication of future potential.

I find it hard to believe that the domain industry could be so heavily reliant on "parked pages" and am therefore intrigued to find out more. Maybe I am missing something but I would be interested to hear people’s thoughts on this matter as I think this point could be adversely affecting the flow of domain sales in the UK unnecessarily.

 

[Edwin]

Exact match gives you an idea of how "sticky" that whole compound keyphrase in the domain name is (assuming it's more than one word, of course). In other words, how many people a month have the EXACT same phrase running through their heads, because of something specific they're after (and hence that they input into Google) that is spelled out in black and white in the domain name.

They're the ones who are most likely to be influenced by seeing the URL - though of course it will have a positive impact on other people looking for the product/service it refers to as well.

So if your domain name is word1word2.co.uk and "word1 word2" has 5,000 exacts then that's at least 5,000 people a month who would potentially "value" your domain name above all others if they saw it in the organic or paid search results.

"Broad" is further eroded by Google's tendency to go extremely broad indeed in lumping "related terms" together. In other words, the broad value may even include long-tail searches that are somewhat synonymous but which contain NONE of the keywords in the domain name!

 

[domsaleuk]

Hi Edwin,
Thanks for your response. I appreciate what you are saying as that makes sense and in some ways I can understand why people on this forum may not wish to look at broad match as it is more long-tail and I realise they are aiming at finding domains that will attract a very targeted market. However my view is that the days of type in traffic and one page websites are surely a thing of the past – shouldn’t the domain industry be looking further than that that and be considering the value of domains in development terms .I believe that is what the end user buyers will be doing and for this reason I think end user buyers will look at phrase match and on some occasions broad match as being the true indicators of value. Whether domainers are just looking at purchases with a view to obtaining a good resale price to an end user or if they are looking to make money from PPC and other revenue streams by developing names on a small scale whilst they wait for their domains to sell this is what I strongly believe that they should be doing too.

Whilst I can see the issues you identify with broad match I really can’t understand why the people on this forum would choose exact match over "phrase match" as by my understanding "phrase match" only includes the keyword terms that contain the exact phrase. By having the core generic term in the domain name one should have every opportunity of securing high positions in search engines above competitors for phrase match terms if a site was developed on the domain utilising good SEO – even if this is done on a small scale. For example – if you take the domain name university-degrees.co.uk– the exact match local figure is only 720 whereas phrase match local is 4,400 – a whole six times higher. This is because the phrase match includes every term with university degrees in it such as university degrees online and university degrees uk and university degree courses. This is perfect because it means the domain can be optimised accordingly – e.g. University-degrees.co.uk/online or university-degrees.co.uk/uk or university-degrees.co.uk/courses. As the domain contains the primary keywords – the part that goes after the slash will in my opinion benefit from the generic strength of the domain which in my mind means much more of a chance of getting picked for highly relevant keywords and thus much more of a chance of generating high quality incoming traffic and making returns from PPC and the like. Also much more chance of being able to sell for a good price to an end user I think. Would be keen to hear your thoughts or anyone elses on this.

 

[cc976a]

I generally look at both. Some on here ignore the GKT altogether.

If I were going to purchase a domain for development I would, of course, first look at the exacts - for reasons Edwin mentions. Exact match bonus comes in to play and more chance of the domain name being of interest and stand out to the searcher.

If there are long tail in there, like phrase or broad, I'd check these to see how I could reach different markets or searchers.

For some on here development means mini-site (or small site) targeting a particular keyword. For each long tail phrase separate sub areas have to be developed, this takes longer and requires more unique content.

Phrase can include terms unrelated to the Market your trying to reach, or looking for information rather than looking to make a purchase. If you focussed on phrase it's not as easy to immediately quantify to sell a name - whereas the buyer knows where they stand with exacts, and knows there is an instant and direct Market to target

 

[Blossom]

In many cases it's harder to determine how many of the broad/phrase match results are informational queries rather than transactional queries.

I know I would make more money ranking just for the term 'web hosting' than I would for 50 phrases like 'what is web hosting'.

In other cases the words may be being used in a different context to what I assume they're being used in, for example in a different industry. If I'm a web host and I'm looking at the broad match for 'reseller', I might not realise that a hell of a lot of people searching Google for a phrase that contains 'reseller' are actually looking for an Apple reseller. And so on.

Edit: It's already been said above. I'm too slow!

 

[Stas]

Exact match domain bonus will make it much easier to rank for its exact phrase (as google knows people often go to websites by typing site's domain words in google search box instead of www.. In address bar and ranks them high so people find their website), so if it has 10000 exact searches, you can potentially get to no 1 and get 5k+ targeted visitors a month without super seo budget and too much work. 5k loan visitors could be very profitable. Without exact match you might never get to no 1 as might not overtake exact match domains whatever seo you do. Seo could cost a fortune too, might even be impossible dream unless you are big brand everyone talks about and links to. The value of exact match are in it.s easy potential/exact match bonus.
Broad match number wouldn't put much value from seo prospective as could just find a reg fee domain that will give same potential. I'd either pay good money for exact match or register nice brandable domain.

 

[Blossom]

Without exact match you might never get to no 1 as might not overtake exact match domains whatever seo you do.

Exact match isn't that much of a deal-killer.

There are way too many other factors in play, some of which are beyond everyone's control.

 

[lethal0r]

exact match is of MASSIVE importance if you have a crappy site no one will link to

 

[domsaleuk]

I get the reasoning behind (a) broad match being too broad and (b) buying for the exact match bonus as SEO is expensive, but I think this is very limiting and only relevant for people looking to generate PPC revenue from launching small sites. If people are buying to sell to end users for high sums or hoping that their small sites will go on to be sold then I do not believe this is the way to look at things and I think the fact that exact match seems to be so widely embraced may be leading things down a bit of the wrong alley.

In my opinion given the points outlined it is Phrase Match that is the best method of looking at available targeted traffic levels and ultimately alongside the age of the domain and the sector etc surely this should be a key indicator of domain value. This is how I think end user buyers such as SEO specialists, developers, marketers and companies will look at things as in most cases they will be buying to build or brand and surely it is when you are buying to build big or to brand that it when it is worth paying high sums for the right domain. They will have either the budgets or know how not to have to rely on the exact match bonus and thus to them I am confident that the Phrase matches will be very important.

The point I am making is purely that I think exact match is extremely limiting in many ways. Because it is being so widely relied upon (it seems) within this industry (or this forum at least) then in a way I think it could be acting as a bottle neck, hindering the true future value of some domains being seen and stopping domainers from purchasing really good domains that ultimately end users could be very interested in.

 

[Edwin]

Here's the thing: the exact match usually seems to be the same as the best term for the niche.

So if you're going to sell to a company that's going to go to the time/effort of a total rebrand (or set up shop yourself "properly") and plaster its new URL everywhere (including business cards, letterheads, vehicle graphics, posters, etc. etc.) then they're going to want the most appropriate domain name.

Remember, 90% of advertising still takes place off-line, despite the UK being the G20's most "web" economy. So it's really about a LOT more than SEO.

 

[scottmccloud]

Too many variables in phrase and broad searches. If your investing serious money in a domain name, then you want as accurate information as possible, and exact matches are one of the things I would look at. And if exact matches are high, then generally phrase and broad results will be high too.

 

[domsaleuk]

Whilst I understand the point Edwin is making - I still think a lot of end user buyers will be more interested in phrase match ( or let's call it the targeted traffic potential of the domain). It will be publishing houses, development companies and the marketing departments of big companies that buy a lot of these domains in the future in my opinion. I do not think they will be looking to rebrand their whole company or make a massive splash with the domains offline - they will simply be looking to generate more revenue and enquiries and they will do this by launching sites that they develop into medium/ big online properties utilising their existing infrastructures which will consist of SEO / PPC / content provision etc and in the case of the companies - their product offerings.

With regard to the point Scottmccloud made about if exact match is high the phrase match usually is too – I agree with that. However it doesn’t tend to work the same the other way around as there can often be a very big difference between exact and phrase so a low exact could have a high phrase and that is my key point. These high phrase match domains could be of great interest to the end user buyers as they will have the ability to develop them and maximise returns from the phrase match (or targeted traffic) searches.

 

[Edwin]

Ok, let's go back to your example, University-Degrees.co.uk

Technically it's not an exact match of anything because of the hyphen (at least, the jury's still out on whether that removes the "exact" bonus that Google etc. give to exact-match domains, but anecdotally it would seem to be reduced at least)

So let's instead talk about UniversityDegrees.co.uk

The question to ask is this: is this the single best domain name for that niche market? Or is there a better domain name that says the same thing?

If the answer is that it IS the best domain, and the niche market itself has value (multiple competitors fighting over a pie of real value) then the exacts remain important but MUCH less so than if it wasn't the best domain.

After all, if you have X companies fighting over niche Y (where X is a decent number and Y is a niche most unambiguously described by "word1 word2" then by definition word1word2.co.uk is the domain name that every one of the X companies in that niche SHOULD be fighting over. Every other domain name is an also-ran.

I believe you could quite easily face a situation where a domain name has say 100-200 exacts but it still has substantial value because it is THE best domain name for a low traffic, high value niche market fought over by many players. There are plenty of businesses which 99.999% of people couldn't care less about (especially in b2b) yet who still make a very good living off the 0.001% who do.

 

[Blossom]

exact match is of MASSIVE importance if you have a crappy site no one will link to

Then be proactive, take control, and build your own links.

 

[domsaleuk]

Hi
Ok – before I continue I want to clarify something. I am not suggesting that anyone stops utilising exact match as a method of assessing the quality of domains, what I am suggesting is that I believe people need to take just as much notice if not more notice of phrase match if they are ultimately looking to sell to an end user for a high value or if they are thinking of developing the names.

I will however throw a spanner in the works with regard to the comment Edwin made about the hyphen by stating that we know the search engines are not human and their algorithms have to work to specific rules and there is a school of thought that suggests that search engines actually view the hyphen as word separators. On this basis I would say that technically it could actually be the non-hyphenated version that is not the exact match. From everything I have read and every test I have done I do not believe that having a hyphen hinders the possibility of first page positioning in any way whatsoever and my view is that the hyphen may indeed be acting as a space in the way in which the engines read the url. If I am right this should enhance the "exact match" aspect and thus add positively to the bonus element. If this is the case it means hyphens will make exact match potential stronger not weaker and indicates that when buying domains for exact match purposes getting the hyphenated version should be a serious consideration and maybe the primary consideration. It would be good if we could do an analysis to prove or disprove the theory but I think it will be difficult as to assess a reasonable cross section of domains we would need to find phrases where we know both versions of a domain are in play, plus there are a number of other factors that could influence positioning such as age, site links etc that would have to be taken into account, so in some respects I think you have to go on logic .

Let’s face it these days we are not generally talking about the best domain for a market as you will often find that there are various options. For example what is the best name for exact match for the keyword phrase “university degrees” from the following? Is it universitydegrees.co.uk, or given that the hyphen space theory could be correct is it actually university-degrees.co.uk or could it even be universitydegrees.com or university-degrees.com etc. As far as I can see it that is four possible domains without even considering the .net, .co or other suffixes that could be vying for the same exact match space. Then taking the sector into consideration you need to decide is it actually the best phrase or is in fact “university degree” the best phrase for this sector from the buyers perspective - suddenly there are a whole load more domains for the end user buyer to choose from. Interestingly this is quite a good example as in exact match terms the better keyword phrase is university degrees with 720 v 320 exact match but in phrase match terms it is university degree which is nearly three times better with 12,100 v 4,400 because in phrase match university degree can be built out to incorporate phrases like “university degree courses” whereas university degrees can’t do this (if you are purely talking about getting the exact keyword phrase in the URL that is displayed).

I totally agree with the point Edwin made that domains with low exact match could still be seen as valuable in the right niche but the point I am really trying to make is that whilst exact match should remain a consideration it should not necessarily be the main consideration as I think Phrase Match is set to be far more important from the perspective of many buyers as a lot of the time they will be looking to develop large web properties and also they may not wish to rely purely on securing the exact match slot. One thing I have noticed on this forum is that a lot of the time when buying domains, people ask for a certain number of exact matches and no hyphens. Whilst a name may not meet this criteria for one (or both reasons) it could actually have a mass of potential in a buyers mind and development terms if it has a lot of Phrase Match searches amongst other things.

It is Phrase Match that gives the best indication of development potential in my opinion and I have explained my thoughts on the hyphen already. However I do also think there are other extremely important factors that add real value to domains such as age (the older the better) and sector potential and I think that these are the things that should be assessed in line with the above when buying and trying to assign potential value to a name.

 

[retired_member34]

there is a school of thought that suggests that search engines actually view the hyphen as word separators. On this basis I would say that technically it could actually be the non-hyphenated version that is not the exact match ... the hyphen may indeed be acting as a space in the way in which the engines read the url.

You must look at the date of such research, the internet (or rather Google, which is what we are really talking about) evolves rapidly.

Search for the following in Google; isahyphennecessary.

You'll find that they did away with the need for word separators some time ago.

 

[Sussexite]

One metric which I always look at for a site for development is the aggregate number of exact match searches plus longer tails.

That's because building a solid site on an EMD makes it highly likely that you will rank very highly for properly SEO'd longer tail phrases which include the domain name.

eg for a geo
Holidays in Domain Name
Domain Name Plumbers
Good Domain Name places to stay etc etc

You can get this by selecting exact match, downloading the csv file from the Adwords tool and adding up the total of local exacts for all the phrases.

 

[domsaleuk]

I don’t think typing in isahyphennecessary into Google gives any indication that Google does not look at hyphens as word separators when used in the URL. What I think this shows is that Google is becoming better and better at deciphering what exactly the searcher intends to be looking for regardless of how they type keyword phrases in to the engine. I would be very interested to hear Geomals views on why exactly you think that by typing isahyphennecessary into Google it serves as proof that a hyphen in a url is not classed as a space.

You will note from this recent thread http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/domai...feeling-value-hyphenated-co-uk-vs-org-uk.html and the quote below from it that I am not the only person that believes the hyphen is used to separate words

Google approves of hyphens to separate words in all contexts, not just domains. For example, with image names like dormer-windows.jpg or with pdf filenames.

So my view of Edwins original point is I would certainly use a hyphenated .co.uk over a .org.uk. My own clients, and their customers, seem to be used to .co.uk primarily and then .org, but in my own experience .org.uk tends to throw people unless it's heavily branded and promoted. It's no trouble to get a hyphenated .co.uk to the top of google, its just with the obvious type-in error that it interferes with human use.

Thats my 2p's worth.

I believe that the hyphen has been looked at as a word separator for a long time by search engines. I believe it will continue to be looked at and with the emergence of future technologies such as speech recognition set to come into mainstream play in various ways as time goes on then I think more importance will be given to this.

 

[Edwin]

If you're a UK business with the UK as your sole or primary market then your "best" domain will be a .co.uk (read Nominet's business research reports, now in their 6th year I believe)

If you're aiming at a global market then .com is key.

All - and I do mean ALL - other extensions represent one compromise or another, and take you further away from the ideal. This is as close to "fact" as you can get in our industry.

I would have hoped in 2012 the above would be a "given"!

BTW, what I said above is completely different from saying "other extensions are worthless". I hope you can see the distinction.

 

[domsaleuk]

One metric which I always look at for a site for development is the aggregate number of exact match searches plus longer tails.

That's because building a solid site on an EMD makes it highly likely that you will rank very highly for properly SEO'd longer tail phrases which include the domain name. .

I totally agree with these points which brings me back to my point about how I believe people should be using Phrase Match to get the snapshot overview of potential value of the name as opposed to Exact Match as this is what Phrase match essentially does - by my understanding Phrase Match takes the core name and then all long tail phrases that include the keywords in the core domain so as I said before I believe it should be the best way to quickly see what names have very good development potential when married with other factors like age, cpc values etc .