Exact Matched Doamins

[Kanna]

Dear Experts,

Give me a suggestions..

*What you all think about EMD(Exact Matched Domains) ?
*Will it penalized by Google?
*My two promotional websites lost their rankings last week. Some webmaster's told me that is because of EMD only.. Is it really true???

Thanks in Advance,
Kanna.

[Ted S]

"Google Warns of Upcoming Exact Match Domain Algorithm Change"

http://searchenginewatch.com/article...gorithm-Change

This news broke all of a week ago so it's far from clear exactly what it means but sufficient to say Google is targeting what it sees as low quality, keyword in domain sites to reduce the "trick" factor. I don't think this will mean you drop off the face of the earth [unless other factors get you there] but rather that Google is removing some of the "free" weight giving in the past.

But read the article, it's good.

[alisha_taylor]

I think it's good for user's point of view. Google want to give spam free result to users. Many low EMD sites are promoted via different method and it filled all the junk result for users. So now we will get more accurate & spam free result.

[Kanna]

Thanks you so much for your reference "Ted S"...

Can you please let me know, what are the ways to recover from EMD algorithm update??? Is there any way to recover??? Or else, I have to move on brand name website only????

"Google Warns of Upcoming Exact Match Domain Algorithm Change"

http://searchenginewatch.com/article...gorithm-Change

This news broke all of a week ago so it's far from clear exactly what it means but sufficient to say Google is targeting what it sees as low quality, keyword in domain sites to reduce the "trick" factor. I don't think this will mean you drop off the face of the earth [unless other factors get you there] but rather that Google is removing some of the "free" weight giving in the past.

But read the article, it's good.

[Ted S]

Thanks you so much for your reference "Ted S"...

Can you please let me know, what are the ways to recover from EMD algorithm update??? Is there any way to recover??? Or else, I have to move on brand name website only????

From the way the article is written it sounds like you just need to be more than a "low quality" site. If you're not and you saw a drop it's likely because they reduced the weight your keyword-domain gave you and simply continuing to build quality content, relevant links and a better site will make up for it in time. If however you have a thin, gimmicky site it may be time to think about changes.

[mikehobby]

I think sites purely meant for the purpose of getting the benefit of having EMD will be penalized,and sites with EMD + Affiliates are the most , i have a site with EMD , 19K exact search volume in G, but my site is no affiliate site,its good content site with authority ,although it didnt rank 1st anyway,but it hasnt lost the 2nd page ranking .

[jadebroad]

Well EMD will only affect your site if you are targeting the same keyword which is present in your domain name and you have low quality backlinks pointing to your site.
So its better to check all your backlinks no matter how big they are in numbers.Mark the irrelevant and low quality and try to clean them.

[dandcouk]

Well-written article. It clears the air. One of my sites (a commercial website) is also hit by the EMD updates. The keyword was in the 3rd rank. Now it is ranked 13th.

[skinnym4n]

As always since panda and penguin: if your side provides value, I see no problem.
Google just wants to penalize sides that rank with factors like emd but provide
nothing of value but make the users click on ads.

[ProSence]

You could easily see in past that lots of site of few pages with exact domain names spreading spam so this update was for those kinds of sites.

[facebooklicious]

Yes its true if you have EMD domains and you are optimizing your website on similar keywords than you can face problem with your ranking on Google. Because recent EMD Google update may harm your website and you will loose your traffic with it so you need to build more backlinks to gain ranking

[paulkaisis]

What is EMD( exact match domains) means? domain name related with keyword?

[paulkaisis]

I read a post at seochatforum there some seo guru said that EMD is taking a boost from google for it's matching with keyword.

[Stevie D]

What is EMD( exact match domains) means? domain name related with keyword?

Yes, pretty much – it's when companies make up a domain name that is a load of keywords strung together. So where as the leading internet bookshop brands itself as Amazon and other big players (which usually come from high street shops) are branded with names that have similarly little to do with books. So a site going for an EMD bonus could be something along the lines of www.cheap-books-online.com, trying to target the exact keyword phrase that people might type in.

[Jack Sparrow]

There are ways to recover such as cleaning up your content, link profile and optimizing all the onsite SEO factors. However, this is the right time for you to make a decision whether to hand on to the exact match domain. There would be refreshes on this EMD update soon and even if you recover your website, you can be sure of not getting hit. It is like living on fear. So make a choice... if you are moving out to a brand domain for good, make a 301 redirect and there are unconfirmed reports of sites which get the same traffic that as it used to before.... According to this poll http://linkd.in/WspCDL many of them still prefer EMD though

[Narendrakumar]

EMD will not work anymore. We have seen most of the website having EMD case provide low quality content and getting paid well by advertisement. Now Google new update says it all.

[xecutech]

I found this thread while searching for others affected by panda and Google's recent EMD changes toward keyword driven domain names. This last update killed my main website and we are having to claw our way back up the serps. Our strategy was to scrap the entire site and build a new site on the same domain name, but being careful not to stuff the same keyword from the domain into the content.

Crossing our fingers and praying to the Google gods that this will save our site. Our domain name is our business name, so it's crazy to think I'd have to change my domain name?

[Stevie D]

Crossing our fingers and praying to the Google gods that this will save our site. Our domain name is our business name, so it's crazy to think I'd have to change my domain name?

If your domain name is your brand name then you shouldn't suffer too much from the EMD update, as that was aimed at people using keyword-stuffed domain names.

[xecutech]

If your domain name is your brand name then you shouldn't suffer too much from the EMD update, as that was aimed at people using keyword-stuffed domain names.

One would think, but the day they rolled it out, I dropped from 2nd on page one for our main search term and now we don't exist at all, unless you type our domain name. I understand there was a panda or penguin update the day or so before the EMD, but we fell out of site. Our brand name has a keyword, but we are still researching what may have hurt us. I did have a competitor threaten to have us dropped from google, but I doubt he could have done that?

[nameviolated]

I found this thread while searching for others affected by panda and Google's recent EMD changes toward keyword driven domain names. This last update killed my main website and we are having to claw our way back up the serps. Our strategy was to scrap the entire site and build a new site on the same domain name, but being careful not to stuff the same keyword from the domain into the content.

Crossing our fingers and praying to the Google gods that this will save our site. Our domain name is our business name, so it's crazy to think I'd have to change my domain name?

Don't forget that at the same time that the EMD update hit there was an update as well from Panda or Penguin (Can't remember which) that pretty much lowered the value of a lot of incoming links with the same anchor text from low quality sites.

I'm testing a strategy of continual link building with different landing pages and different anchor text based on similar words.