Google Penalising Keyword Rich Domains?

[shayman]

Hi
Over the past couple of months Google has been messing around 'big time' with several of my websites ranking, but particularly it seems to be domains that contain keywords/keyphrases ie. myproductkeyphrase.com.

Initially my sites kept dropping out then returning but recently several seem to have just been knocked off completely even though they had been pretty much established, so although a couple of them were new sites several have been high ranking for several years.

Has anyone else had similar issues, does anyone know why this may be happening and most importantly does anyone know what I could do to get the sites back?

Is this a new tactic from Google and are the days of using these types of domains for SEO numbered?

Regards
Shayman

[2011]

hosting should be good to easily rank in google as google like faster loading pages

[zigato]

What have your competitors been doing?

[markowe]

I don't think Google logically can penalise keyword rich domains/EMDs. Think of a brand name like, I dunno, a bricks-and-mortar company called Massachussets Toilet Seats. If its domain is MassachussetsToiletSeats.com, Google cannot penalise it, that's the name of the company! How can Google reliably distinguish between a brand name and an EMD registered purely for SEO purposes? I don't believe it can.

[gazraz101]

I wonder if it is the panda update, i knwo several clients that had issue's with their sites.

with some of the site, i left, others i tweaked to see what happened, the tweked ones moved slightly, the ones i left eventually came back.

Another thing i noticed is that when google places has your link o nthe main page, the placement of your non palces url is removed from the serps, when places does not place you on page one, your serps url returns..

Very strange indeed.

[shayman]

Hi All and thanks for your replies so far. I'm not dismissing anything that you've said, however it is certainly happening and I'm not imagining it...I'd say to around 5 of my best websites. Unless anyone else reports a similar issue then I'll assume it's just me

It's nothing to do with competition because the domains are literally being taken off, not just pushed down the order.

One thing that is at the back of my mind is that the sites are all on the same hosting account and I'm assuming will have the same IP range, so with that in mind could Google have targeted my sites due to one site maybe flaunting the rules?

I don't know, I'm not sure what Google is capable of but I'm just trying to think of answers??
Thanks again
Shayman

I wonder if it is the panda update, i knwo several clients that had issue's with their sites.

I certainly think this has had an effect yes.

[willyyard]

This happen with one of our website too, the domain is on one of the actress name and during 1st week of Aug 2011 it was ranking on top and suddenly it vanished from the search engines and even all the pages which were indexed is no more indexed.

I did some research and when i search for robots.txt, Disallow option was there and i was surprise to see that there is no such robots.txt file exits on the root directory. Site is hosted on Bluehost. Then manually i created new robots.txt and uploaded into the root directory, but after 4 days also none of the page is indexed. Seems like hosting company used to add this Disallow option when there is good amount of traffic coming into the website.

[NeilC]

Keyword based domain names are just one part of multiple ranking factors.

Over or under optimising many of the known factors can both improve or damage rankings so in the last few months it's just got even more complicated to figure out exactly what's going on.

I generally don't try to over-do any particular area of SEO now and concentrate more on quality and being as natural as possible. Short term gains are okay but I prefer to work on getting more stable rankings.

Moving away from relying too heavily on keyword domains is a good strategy:-)

[shayman]

Moving away from relying too heavily on keyword domains is a good strategy:-)

I'm beginning to think that you may have a point.
Shayman

[MikeFriedman]

I do not believe that Google is penalizing keyword rich domains, but I do believe they may diminished its value as a ranking value.

[gbvehiclehire]

It is surprising to hear this about google. Keyword rich domains are good for concern sites & promote it online. This fact about google cannot be fully correct or may have any reason.

[brendanglanville]

Makes me realise justhow much power google holds.

[libertysridhar]

I don't think the reason Google penalizing your sites just because they got the keyword rich domain names. I guess you would have used similar type of link building strategy or you might have used almost same links to build for all your sites. Now, google might have started devaluing your links so that could be the reason why your sites see consistent Google dance.

If you would like to cross check for different keywords which you rank for that is not in your domain. If their ranking stay the same then it might be the reason you say but if you could see your rankings drop for all your keywords then it must be the reason that Google have started devaluing your links. Good luck.

[shayman]

Originally Posted by libertysridhar

I don't think the reason Google penalizing your sites just because they got the keyword rich domain names. I guess you would have used similar type of link building strategy or you might have used almost same links to build for all your sites. Now, google might have started devaluing your links so that could be the reason why your sites see consistent Google dance.

I hope that no one is thinking that I'm making this statement as a matter of fact. It is more aimed as a question and to see if anyone else was experiencing the same issue, and what they have done about it.

I think there are some valid points here and yes it may just be a coincedence that it seems to be affecting my keyword rich domains. I HOPE I'm wrong about it because it has been a good part of SEO strategy.

Shayman

[libertysridhar]

Originally Posted by shayman

I hope that no one is thinking that I'm making this statement as a matter of fact. It is more aimed as a question and to see if anyone else was experiencing the same issue, and what they have done about it.

I think there are some valid points here and yes it may just be a coincedence that it seems to be affecting my keyword rich domains. I HOPE I'm wrong about it because it has been a good part of SEO strategy.

Shayman

I got you. At this point all we could do is wait and build some quality links constantly and start looking for various factors that might affect your rankings. There is a huge list of factors that might affect rankings and certainly different versions on how we look at it.

Sridhar

[shayman]

'messy' is a good word for it! It certainly seemed to change a lot of my website rankings, almost on a daily basis, but as I said at the outset it seems to have hit my keyword rich domains the hardest.
That said, I actually had other sites that disappeared only to return higher after a few days! I'm just hoping that this will happen with the sites that have gone, but several have been non existent now for over a month so I'm beginning to fear the worst forthem
Shayman

[Fernando Veloso]

OP; even if your sites doesn't come back strong, do not sell them. This is just another cycle and Google will value those EMD's again.

Wait and see what happens. Meanwhile, check everything, including your source code.

[Oranges]

Rubbish! You must be doing something wrong with your backlinks or on-page (Content). Link velocity counts for a lot these days, specially after panda.

[james7]

I don't believe that google penalising keyword rich domains. I think you make some mistake in on page like may be keyword density is more on your site for the same keyword which is in url.

[shayman]

Originally Posted by Oranges

Rubbish! You must be doing something wrong with your backlinks or on-page (Content). Link velocity counts for a lot these days, specially after panda.

As I said earlier, I'm not stating this as a matter of fact. There may well be other factors involved.

What I am saying though is that these aren't just new sites that have been thrown up without consideration and messed with. These are established sites that have been perfoming well for many years in some cases. So something HAS changed!

Shayman

[paulgl]

Google is looking at all types of what they consider spam.
If you read between the lines, that could include a lot of
things. They have already warned about blog comments
being nothing BUT spam. But people blow that off.

I predicted a few months ago that EMD that have a spam
ring to them will be the next to get axed. Mind you, I'm
not talking about all EMDs, and yours might not even
fall into what I am talking about.

Let me give one what-if. Zillow is one of the leading real estate
sites on the planet. They got there without an EMD, as many big
boys (and girls) do. I have always told people to choose a short,
cool domain. Now if you were trying to get a website in the real
estate game, and chose a domain like best-real-estate-deals-reviews.com,
well, in relation to zillow.com, what sounds spammy? What sounds
like it could be just a site with junk, created specifically to churn
google?

Google does things 99.9999% by auto-computer-algo.

Just saying. Not saying that EMDs are bad. Not saying keyword
rich domains are bad.

A site that relies on content instead of domain, in my opinion is
always better off in the long run.

Paul

[Talat10]

I have read somewhere that Matt from Google saying in future Google will make changes in the algorithm to not give more weight to KW rich domains name in SEO. May be that change has now showing up...

[shayman]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Let me give one what-if. Zillow is one of the leading real estate
sites on the planet. They got there without an EMD, as many big
boys (and girls) do. I have always told people to choose a short,
cool domain. Now if you were trying to get a website in the real
estate game, and chose a domain like best-real-estate-deals-reviews.com,

See, I'm with you all the way on this. Mine are not hyphenated but maybe Google has become a bit more selective.

The thing is, the content on my sites is all original and certainly not what I would consider spam. It's just a bunch of articles that I wrote myself.

[Oranges]

Originally Posted by shayman

As I said earlier, I'm not stating this as a matter of fact. There may well be other factors involved.

What I am saying though is that these aren't just new sites that have been thrown up without consideration and messed with. These are established sites that have been perfoming well for many years in some cases. So something HAS changed!

Shayman

1. Checked your backlinks? Deleted, Penalized, De-valued?
2. Competition? What are they doing? When a site goes down, someone goes up, so its obvious, they are doing something better, compared to what you have done to gain those rankings.
3. Content Updated? constantly? Are your competitors constantly updating?
4. Site interlink structure? Link from inner pages to home page and other sub pages counts for a lot.
5. Link Velocity? Timing counts for a lot.
6. Through some High PR home page links, and see your site flying.
7. More quality backlinks.
8. More quality backlinks.
9. More quality backlinks.
10. And yeah....! More quality backlinks.

[shayman]

2. Competition? What are they doing? When a site goes down, someone goes up, so its obvious, they are doing something better, compared to what you have done to gain those rankings.

Sorry Oranges, I think something got lost in translation..my fault. When I say 'Down' I mean OFF! as in do not figure anywhere on Google. That's from page 1 to ZERO overnight.

[Oranges]

Originally Posted by shayman

Sorry Oranges, I think something got lost in translation..my fault. When I say 'Down' I mean OFF! as in do not figure anywhere on Google. That's from page 1 to ZERO overnight.

Then, its Google dance or penalized for something. I would keep building links (generally some high PR backlinks, will do it.) and update it with fresh content to bring it back.

[shayman]

Originally Posted by Oranges

Then, its Google dance or penalized for something. I would keep building links (generally some high PR backlinks, will do it.) and update it with fresh content to bring it back.

I see, so you believe that even as a worst case scenario the sites have been penalized then continuing to work on the sites content and backlinking will help. I do hope so.

Just to reiterate there is nothing spammy about these sites. They have been around for a while now and on page 1 Google.

The content is my own (although much of it I have placed on Ezine Articles mainly and backlinked to the sites). They are on the whole Wordpress sites with the usual SEO modules built in.

The only thing that I would consider spammy is that fact that the domain is keyword rich but without hyphens.

Thanks
Shayman