How Google might turn down the knob on exact match domains

A large number of casino affiliates rely on traffic brought to them through great domains which contain high volume keywords, these domains rank a lot easier for that query and therefore are extremely valuable to us.

But we should also be aware that not everyone builds useful sites on this type of domain, and they are often used for spamming or are not as good as the competition, who do not hold an exact match domain. So it makes sense that Google may be looking into lowering the ranking authority these domains have or at least looking at a way to distinguish between the two to provide better results.

As an affiliate who this directly affects I assumed there may be others on GPWA that may be able to benefit on this post by Ross Hudgens:

http://www.rosshudgens.com/exact-mat...-too-powerful/

Enjoy! :)

That was actually a very interesting article....and will likely read it again.

Rick
Universal4

I do believe that these domain name are given too much weight personally. People are aware they can rank much higher with KW domains and Google thinks that these sites are the best when there are spam site ranking high.

People then tend to go for the domain-domain-domain.com sites then getting sites with brand names and trying to build that brand. However, some sites with exact KW URLs do deserve to rank for their terms.

On another note, CheapFlights dot com I think that the new algorithm change that has been discussed in that article would be rather stupid if it was implemented.

So, because someone links to the site Cheap Flight that is ok, even though I have capitalised both letters in this sentence and that is what people do in sentence, haha. But then if I said cheap flights in a sentence that has no capitals which is more grammatically correct that would pass no value?

I am sorry but we are not all perfect at grammar.

"After all, even the dumbest, most inane person won’t ever call Pepsi pepsi or Coke coke – if they have any grasp on the English language – or proper formatting – at all."

I see where he is coming from as people do tend to capitalise brands but that will not stop spam as a Mums having a blogs may link to it Cheap flights rather than the Cheap Flights.

On another note, the site is not a spammy site and offers great value, other site need to try really hard to beat it and pay more for Adsense, why would Google care about it being there if it does its job and people pay more for advertising to try and compete?

Sorry for the rank, haha

First, Dave, thank you for posting this article. I noticed a large number of referrers to my blog from a Gambling site and had to investigate further. Thankfully I'm good at this search thing. :)

Craig, I can understand your point of view, but what I state in the article (and how search engines are viewed in general), is that these ranking signals are never "Yes or No" statements, where they either pass a lot of value or no value. Having it not capitalized wouldn't offer no value - some people just don't capitalize brands, as you say - it would simply offer less. Just as how one bad spam link doesn't hurt a domain, if you have thousands of them, it inevitably will. It's all the factors working together at once - and I believe that how people capitalize brand names is a pretty clear cut way - when we look at thousands of links - to determine whether or not a website is a brand.

Of course, those savvy enough to know this could manipulate things - if we knew that Google was looking at this as a signal. :)

Hey Ross, I never thought you would find my rant on this forum, lol

I get the idea of what it would achieve but I reckon most people could get around this factor if it was implemented like you said. With the domain being cheapflights dot com if 80% of its anchor text was cheap flights then that is normal as search engines consider that a brand name.

Sites such as skyscanner dot net which ranks for the same term, if that had 80% of its anchor text saying cheap flights then that would be a little unnormal unless it had variations such as: cheap flights, Cheap flight, Cheap Flight, cheap Flight. To me and Google that would seem like more natural link building as they know not everyone will link with Cheap Flight anchor version.

The easiest way to implament a new algorythem change is to look at sites that have no branding links compared to other anchor text.

What are your thoughts about the site being of good value so why bother trying to change where it ranks?

This is a very difficult problem for Google to deal with.

On one side you have people using domain name keywords to game google, on the other hand if you search for:
coca cola, 99.9% of the time the only site a searcher wants is coke.com. So when it comes to branding, it should be weighted as it is. Unfortunately this opens the door for people to create coke-cola.com like domains full of spam. It's a difficult problem, but I'm sure they'll find some sort of solution.