Exact Match Domain (EMD) Google Update: What's Experts says?

Google announced another change to the algorithm last week that could not only affect your ranking but also the value of domain names as well!





Matt Cutts Warned Us About The EMD Update Over A Year 

Ago:----

He points to a Webmaster Help video from Google’s Matt Cutts from early 2011, where he hinted that Google would be “turning down” exact match domains as a ranking signal. Here’s what he said exactly:

“We have looked at the rankings and weights that we give to keyword domains and some people have complained that we’re giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains. And so we have been thinking about adjusting that mix a little bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm so that given two different domains, it wouldn’t necessarily help you as much to have a domain with a bunch of keywords in it.”

 Matt went on to say that the change “affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree,” but didn’t pin down the timeline. We measured a 24-hour drop in EMD influence from 3.58% to 3.21%. This represents a day-over-day change of 10.3%. While the graph only shows the 30-day view, this also marks the lowest measurement of EMD influence on record since we started collecting data in early April.

Matt Cutts announced a “small,” upcoming algorithm change meant to reduce the amount of low quality exact match domains in search results. Exact match domains contain keywords that exactly match the search query.

Cutts also tweeted, “New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.”

 Whats the jim Stewart says:---

Google's EMD Algo Update

Google has been announcing a lot of algorithm changes lately.   Google   has unleashed yet another algorithm as part of a series of updates that are aimed at providing users with better search results and experience. This time, Google’s update, dubbed the “EMD update,” focuses on ridding the SERPs of  spammy or low-quality “exact-match” domains. The EMD Update — for “Exact Match Domain” — is a filter Google launched in September  2012 to  prevent poor quality  sites from  ranking well  simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names. When a fresh EMD Update happens, sites that have improved their content may regain good rankings. Google announced the EMD Update, a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don’t rise high in Google’s search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. The most significant benefit of an exact match domain is that it makes it much more easy to develop targeted keyword anchor text from authority sites. Anchor text as an SEO tool is in decline, but it has always been a very significant factor, and will likely remain this way to some extent. It’s much easier to get someone to link to your site with the domain name, than it is to tell them “link to me with these keywords." This is probably the major competitive advantage over non-EMD domains. Exact match domains have been on Matt and his team’s radar for well over 2 years. I think it’s a very difficult thing to ‘draw the line’ of which domains are okay and which aren’t. Google continues to find relevant sites based on page quality, offsite value, domain authority, and keyword relevance. Always be willing to spend 10-15% of your overall budget on the BEST domain name you can get. It will make a big difference in both the short and long run. Dive into the aftermarket, and send some emails. Skip the second level TLD’s - .mobi / .travel / .info isn’t worth it. No more than one dash in your domain (better to just skip dash domains altogether) 3-4 words max for .com EMD’s 2-3 words max for .net/.org EMD’s      All of these updates are designed to increase the quality of Google’s search results. Beyond the EMD update, Google has recently made other changes to how it handles domains in different cases. Before the EMD update, Google announced the Domain Diversity update, for example. In its recently announced list of 65 changes from the past two months, Google revealed another domain-related tweak related to freshness to help users find the latest content from a given site when two or more documents from the same domain are relevant for a given query. Lucky owners of exact-match domains for highly-trafficked keywords have long enjoyed easy rankings and the wealth of highly-targeted organic search traffic that results. You visit my SEO Technology Blog to get more updated information.    Thanks   Amit Kumar