Exact match .com domains

If you go with what works now then go for it. I have had great success with EMDs and will continue to.

The thing with exact match domains is that they tell Google and the other search engines exactly what the domain is likely to be about, if they kill that and simply let any random collection of letters and numbers be ranked it would throw the whole delicate system into turmoil.

It is one thing to tweak the relevance of backlinks in blogs and suchlike but to start ignoring something as fundamental as an address would be akin to throwing a nuclear bomb in the middle of Paris and watching where the Eiffel Tower lands.

Exact match domains are not ranked at the top of the search engines automatically anyway, they are there because people find them to easiest to find and navigate to, doing something as stupid as this would mean Google would also have to throw that "customer experience" they keep banging on about out the window too as that plays a big role in what gets ranked highly too in symbiosis.

"Cheap Flights" goes to the top of the search engines all the time because that is what people look for and what other people recommend, it would not be there if no one gave a damn about it. Imagine the chaos if every weekend you had absolutely no idea where a site would be from one day to the next simply because they got rid of probably the one most important thing that people use when telling someone about something.

Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive. ~Thomas C. Haliburton

The above quote usually does not apply to domain names.

In my opinion, exact domain actually will help you ranking because google think it's the keywords (will be bolded on google search)

But that's not the only matters, many other thing matter such as content, backlinks, etc. Exact domain name is just a bonus, because i've seen cases where some reviews page outrank the exact keyword domain.

In many cases an EMD will get you on the 1st or 2nd page of G with nothing but the fact that it is an EMD (esp. if it is low competition).

googles always up to something that throws a monkey wrench into the gears so i would not doubt they would catch on to this and change it up too.

exact match domains with .com are the best

I think exact match domain can still help to rank higher. But it depends on the competition on keywords too. For some competitive keywords you can't reach top results with exact domain match but for others you easily can.