Google update... going after EMD's

[mat]

In my opinion Google is a mess at the moment and all these updates need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Take one of my sites for example, a .co.uk exact match for the term "cheap golf balls". The site was made in 1 night about 2 years ago.

It has no real optimisation carried out, each page is pretty much 99% duplicate content, it is full of affiliate listings as the main content, no links, never updated, yet it has strengthened in rankings after every update.

At one point this was not in the top five pages of Google, over time it has been creeping its way up the serps and within the last week it has been 5th in Google. Today it is 2nd (At time of writing) The .org.uk exact match is also at the bottom of page 1.

I have many other examples like this.

 

[mat]

I believe making your "brand" match your exact match domain name is the key to ranking well. It will be very hard for Google to penalise you on both the domain name and inbound link anchor text if it is your "brand".

 

[Ashton]

From #1 to bottom of page 1, this has hit me

Also worth noting, my site had tons of relevant blog posts, content, pages, clearly met the google guidelines. Yet the site which is now number 1 has 3 pages, no content to speak of, and has only existed very briefly, also its backlink profile is shit compared to mine.

Ah well, the game is afoot!

 

[peacock]

Mine were for very low competition keywords and they've totally gone which makes me think they might be being re-evaluated.

If they keep their current position then you actually get penalised for having an EMD.

How are their link profiles?
How much content and how much "fresh" content have they got?

(Just curious, to see if we can spot any patterns... I mean one of things with an EMD is you should get quite a few exact match anchor texts too)

 

[peacock]

I'm also curious to know if anyone has spotted:

• Any difference between .co.uk / .org.uk movements?
• Any move away from G's preference for .uk sites in Google.co.uk .... has anyone seen .com's come up?

 

[peacock]

From #1 to bottom of page 1, this has hit me

Also worth noting, my site had tons of relevant blog posts, content, pages, clearly met the google guidelines. Yet the site which is now number 1 has 3 pages, no content to speak of, and has only existed very briefly, also its backlink profile is shit compared to mine.

Ah well, the game is afoot!

Wow, so the site that has replaced you hasn't got an EMD?
How do you think they get to the top then?.....
- anchor text ?
- "on page SEO" like title tag ?
- do they have great usability (high time on site / low bounce) ?
- social signals ?

 

[Ashton]

Wow, so the site that has replaced you hasn't got an EMD?
How do you think they get to the top then?.....
- anchor text ?
- "on page SEO" like title tag ?
- do they have great usability (high time on site / low bounce) ?
- social signals ?

It has wordkeywordword as its domain.

I'm still looking into them, but as a brief summary:

- 3 pages (homepage, quote page, contact page)
- Homepage has 3 paragraphs of related content (mainly about terms)
- h1 is keyword
- Keyword only mentioned twice in source (page title + h1)
- Static HTML site
- Not iframe for application
- Backlinks from 6 months ago to 20th Sept: 1000
- Backlinks today: 1260
- New backlinks 26th september: 0
- New backlinks 22nd september: 100
- Top DA link: Site with white text on light blue background, very low quality unrelated company.
- Anchors: 50% Keyword, 20% No text, 13% some random sentence.
- Load time 1.89s (mine is 1.64s)
- Page size: 1.3mb (mine is around 900kb)

In regards to usability: Nope, there is only 3 paragraphs to read on the whole site and they are badly worded for readability.

Social Signals: None that I can see.

Probably worth noting the number 1 position for this keyword is worth $xx,xxx

 

[peacock]

Thanks and wow!
Maybe it's a freshness thing or maybe it's just the "dance"
Will be interesting to see if it is still there in a few days.

Got me wondering if churn and burn is the way forward....

It has wordkeywordword as its domain.

I'm still looking into them, but as a brief summary:

- 3 pages (homepage, quote page, contact page)
- Homepage has 3 paragraphs of related content (mainly about terms)
- h1 is keyword
- Keyword only mentioned twice in source (page title + h1)
- Static HTML site
- Not iframe for application
- Backlinks from 6 months ago to 20th Sept: 1000
- Backlinks today: 1260
- New backlinks 26th september: 0
- New backlinks 22nd september: 100
- Top DA link: Site with white text on light blue background, very low quality unrelated company.
- Anchors: 50% Keyword, 20% No text, 13% some random sentence.
- Load time 1.89s (mine is 1.64s)
- Page size: 1.3mb (mine is around 900kb)

In regards to usability: Nope, there is only 3 paragraphs to read on the whole site and they are badly worded for readability.

Social Signals: None that I can see.

Probably worth noting the number 1 position for this keyword is worth $xx,xxx

 

[peacock]

My largest site - not an EMD - but keywords in domain has been high in the SERPs for 12 months has vanished

Has been replaced with .com.au, .dk and .se sites all with an EMD - wtf?!?!

Hope they start making alterations as they did with Panda / Penguin. This was in no means a low quality site. Professionally designed, pages on pages of unique well written quality content (that people read!), and lots of social awareness with YouTube videos with thousands of plays - and wasn't' a crappy MFA or parked page....

....here's waiting!

The .se , .dk sites might be explained by the "fact" that Google generally pushes out algo changes in English languages first and then adjusts the others later.

 

[martin-s]

When sending sales emails, I often quote similar EMDs which are ranking well.

Having checked several of these, they are almost all still ranking.

I think it's going to be a couple of days until everything has settled down enough to tell much.

 

[PoshTiger]

Mine were 3 x org.uk and 2 x .co.uk

They were quite heavily optimised joomla sites (not too much though) with pretty much no fresh content in 6 months and OK link profiles, a few directories, some guest posts but all manual.

I think they're just dancing at the moment as the punishment at the moment is too severe, non EMD sites with similar profiles are still ranking.

 

[max99x]

exact match domains should be treated just like non exact matches.

I.e proper link building, real content, useful etc.

Exact domains will always hold value as users more likely to click due to name, great for PPC etc.

From the update seems my solid built sites on EMD's have stayed same or risen, bad sites on EMD's stayed same or lower. So it kinda makes sense.

People thinking EMD's are dead are stupid. Whats a business/user want more laptops.co.uk or thelaptopshop.co.uk

 

[newguy]

Expanding on others comments, it does appear to have hit hyphenated domains and partial match domains too. Maybe PoshTiger is right and this hasn't settled down yet. If it has, it's something of a game changer.

 

[cc976a]

Looking in to the analysis I've done (on a very small niche) it does appear affiliate sites have been hit.

I'm seeing cases where affiliates and retailers stood side by side in SERPs but retailers stayed whilst affiliates disappeared. Doesn't even seem to be coming down to quality, as some people have said - it's too harsh.

Cutts statement was 'low quality EMD' - we're all seeing evidence this is more sinister. This appears a smoke screen for a devastating hit to affiliates and the like.

Will reiterate my earlier post Cutts doesn't want MFA or affiliates in his engine taking something for nothing.

 

[Hegemon]

I note that Matt Cutts said that a) 0.6% of "English-US" queries were affected and b) that he believes it's US-only for the moment.

https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/251804077623742464

 

[tifosi]

I think there's a certain amount of paranoia and knee-jerk reactions happening here.

The power of an emd - and there's some dispute here and elsewhere what exactly an emd is vs descriptive and generic domains - is not in the miniscule seo boost that google gives it because of a few keywords in the url.

I think the problem is in those expecting them to perform well in seo 'because' they are emd's. That google is removing/downgrading this is imo quite correct.

In the end 'content is king'. Not just any content.

As jmot says seo is dead. And quite rightly rip seo in the traditional sense. The days of a seo company cookie cuttering your site with meta data and keyword littered content is long gone. Good riddance! Google wants sites with authority... authority in the traditional sense of the way it's earned offline. By hard work, time & effort. Build a site with relevent content and build it well to web standards, keep it updated, build a presence and community.

Thats where the power of an emd comes in, whether its an emd in the way I think of them, as long-tailed phrases, or in descriptive & generic domains
which accurately match a noun, product or service. An emd - read descriptive/generic - tied to a strong site will always outweigh one with a weak url simply by the kudos that is inferred to is by the layman & man on the street who really doesn't give jack shitte for seo.

The value of long-tailed emds may decrease but the market for compact descriptive & generics will have little to fear from this.

This is the best synopsis i've read so far: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline

 

[murph]

I'm definitely seeing .co.uk queries affected. No doubt about that. Hope there's not more to come...

 

[Jamie101]

I'm definitely seeing .co.uk queries affected. No doubt about that. Hope there's not more to come...

Same.

There's no way it's US only at the moment. From what I've seen, this was rolled out at about 11 or 12 o clock last night.

 

[philiporchard]

if you're looking for some web database development we're doing alright...

 

[Stas]

Bloody Google, was expecting penguin to clean up some room by removing new sites that popped using pre-penguin techniques and instead they keep penguin away ond throw this