Google To Crack Down on Low-Quality, Exact-Match Domains

I thought this might be coming. I had a feeling Google saw those as spammy, and I'm so glad I don't operate any EMDs!

Amen man...It was only a matter of time. The EMD zealots must be losing their minds.

I literally just saw this and was about to post it here. Guess you beat me to it!
Anyway as long your EMD isn't just a one page site with crappy content - you should be okay.

I have a few EMD's - lets see what happens.

True, there is no reason for Google to target anything else but those 3 to 10-page made-for-adsense low quality EMDs that people have been building for years. Also, if you have built up your EMD to some sort of authority then you should feel safe. But, people ranking their EMD just because it's an EMD and not backed up by anything else will suffer (which is the case for a lot of sites).

Omg, it's immediate. From 1st page to ....

EMD is officially dead.

No wonder why a lot of people recently complaining about losing their ranks.. This is not a surprise anyway..

err~~ what is the meaning of EMD?

Yes, anything EMD is hit.

has this algo change happened already or happening in near future?

Had to of just happened because I had a site that was completely knocked out in the last hour. It was not linked and was ranking earlier today pretty well.

He did say low-quality. No worries for warriors.

EMD's will still hold value. I'd rather have a quality EMD than a quality non-EMD.... good news is that many niches will start to open up again... some of the site ranking top 10 on just EMD merrit are total junk. I for one am happy about this development.

NameLess....

All I can say is:




You obviously didn't understand what I was saying because you insisted that I said ALL exact-match domains would be punished. My point is that I never said that. You clearly missed the nuance of my statement.

I stand by my comment. Virtually all EMDs will be hit. That means a very, very, very large percentage of them. Some will survive but there will be very few. Is that clear enough for you?

Oh, and thanks for the reference to my sig. It gets more eyeballs to it.

I just checked a couple of my EMD and the two I looked at have vanished? Even the competitors sites are gone. However I still see others that have not moved yet, will have to keep watching.

If you have enough of quality content and you building quality backlinks there is no update that can destroy you. This going to punish only Low Quality Sites with EMD Domains probably.

A few of my non-EMD websites were hit. These websites had dozens of pages of quality content written by a well educated American college graduate. Their backlink profiles had plenty of contextual raw URL anchored backlinks. The websites also generated plenty of organic shares and likes.

In each case, the whole website was effected - the mainpage and inner pages, which ranked for numerous keywords. The keywords were included in the URL for the inner pages.

I am still hoping that the websites will resurface once the algo update is complete, but I am not holding my breath.

I need to figure out what triggered this penalty and either address it on the current websites or build new ones.

A couple of these websites were using a popular CTR style theme, but with non-aggressive ad placements. I wonder if Google might be targeting these themes?

I am also left wondering if this update will be a periodic filter like penguin and panda, or a part of the algo. If it is part of the algo we will be able to figure it out much quicker.

Oh Dear, this is going to be interesting. I wonder whats next.

I just read the article, and I agree with an earlier post. My takeaway - as long as the emd is not the driver of your website (one page websites, which penguin pretty much obliterated anyway) than you should be fine.

But we'll see - I could be wrong

I've preached time after time..

The days of gaming Google are numbered.

Google phds > blackhats

@Nameless,

You won't win. Just make your excuses and leave like I did, lol.

It was a matter of time. There are a lot more things to come which will may disappear the things related to SEO.

Anyone have a pr3 site or better pr hit?

From the looks of things, the algo looks to crack down on only LOW QUALITY EMDs. If it was indeed to effect all EMDs, it would wipe out a vast majority of websites in search results, and that wouldn't make sense. And despite panda and penguin, I still do see these really low quality spammy sites in search results. So, all in all, I wouldn't be worried.

really? thats actually kind of a relief, good on their part to keep things clean.

Glad to hear something like this.

It basically comes down to 'does your site provide value?'

Posting a 5 page site with keyword stuffed articles is not valuable. Doesn't matter if those articles were well written, they are rarely of value.

I had a few of my EMDs hit, only two escaped, but dropped a couple of spots.

After analyzing mine and others, I think it is not related so much to the quality of the sites' content, but has a lot to do with external factors and signals of being real businesses.

No matter what they do, I still think EMD will still have their place.

I have two one page EMDs that moved from position 2 to position 10 on the first page. I assume the next move would be to build them out to about 8-10 pages each with related content. That, and some additional link building should push them back to number one.

My emd's got hit. First batch of sites so guess based on newbie mistakes? However some have good unique content related to the niche. What is solid content anyway if 5 page sites with good info get hit?

My niche has 3 EMD in the top 20 and my rank has actually improved since is announcement even though I am EMD. It is definitely quality based and not just EMD and your done. Panic over, for me at least.

Could be referring to low quality content but that's not new, is it? But a low quality EMD could refer to a... hyphened EMD as well.

So far, I can see plenty of EMDs holding their ranks and that's in various niches I monitor. However, several hyphened EMDs have been severely hit.

Too soon to tell. Let's wait a bit more to see what happens.

Not aware how will google define "low quality" ?

EMD means exact.
On the other hand and I see sites that have suffix and/or prefix being penalized too.
So, this is not exactly about exact keywords.

It was Google who set this as a rule for success on the first place. You can't sell 'keyword' products and be called something else. That would be spam by definition.

I am disappointed by so many Google worshipers around here. You are not webmasters. You just blindly approve all that Google does. Google should be search engine. But lately they did so little to improve search results. They are becoming just a plain money making website for selling various products.

And one more thing. They don't check if the site is poor or not. I've seen some authority sites going down as well.

This is all a continuing shift to authority sites...it will only get worse.

Don't sweat it...build lists, relationships, fan pages and keep rolling

Another thing to try...

Kill your EMD off and take the content and move it to a new domain. It can't hurt.

Thanks guys, sounds like a plan. Of course, my few 'hit' sites may reappear, but I'm still going to create some new authority sites as I'm done with EMDs!

Ok so lets put it from the user point of view. When you do a search for blueshoes, and you get on first position a site that is called blueshoes(dot)com then you tend to think that site has blue shoes and you go there and voayla... they have what you are looking for. Why this should be considered spammy?? I`m not against emd`s only because they are spammy They should figure another way to determine if that site is spammy or not.

I always wondered why "buyweightlossproductsandloseweightfasttoday.c om" wasn't a big money maker. -.-

For those of you that got hit, did you use dashes in the domain name?

keyword-keyword.com

I've always thought the dashes in a domain just screams out that you are trying to take advantage of the keyword rich domain name boost. It would only make sense for them to target those. I'm going to bet the percentage of sites with dashes that got hit is going to be higher than the non-dash domains. Just speculation though.

Anyone use dashes and not get hit?

Mike,

There is a domain in my niche that is a competitor of mine that uses dashes. One-two-three.com is the format. In fairness it is a good site, good content and is still ranking high first page no problem. In all honesty even though I would love to see it kicked to make it less competition for me I don't see it going anywhere.

There is a competitor on my other website keyword-keyword-keyword.net still sitting in its #1 in google!

Im amazed at the amount of people who actually believe anything that matt cutts says. And also, the amount of people who are saying its about time. With every single update, the search results get worse.

Take the classic keyword: make money online

#1 - 1 month old affiliate youtube video
#3 - A press release

good search quality? I dont think so..

I myself, have been hit on only one of my sites (for now anyway). The site does not have an EMD, has over 500 pages of handwritten content that is actualy helpful to its visitors (as the site is about my profession) and has a large following of returning visitors.

The site is pr 5, 7 years old and has natural backlinks. Only SEO done is onpage.

Does this deserve to be penalised? No

That will be the end of all EMD market brokers.....

Calm down folks. Breathe. If Wednesday or Thursday of next week roll around and things are still the same, you can start thinking about panicking. Wait until the dust settles.

Hi all, sorry to hear that some of you are suffering from this latest hit, i can totally sympathize, I'm devastated at the mo

I would just like to know what 'Low quality exact match means.'?

Only my sites did have exact match domains but they were updated daily, the longest every 3-4 days, with personally written unique relevant content, no less than 500 words. No spelling mistakes and good punctuation. How can Google consider that a low quality site?!!!

Very confused and feel injustice as i can see that many crappy exact match domains are still ranking.

Saying that the search results are worse after every update is just silly. Maybe in your niche and your little world they look worse to you. However, none of us have the computing power to gather enough data to say that across the board the search results have gotten worse. Nor can any of say with absolute certainty that they have gotten better.

So let's skip the whining about search results getting worse and the gloating about them getting better. Unless you have thousands of servers in your basement spidering the web to give you enough data to say one way or the other, you are just making an assumption based on your tiny little insignificant space on the internet.

Yes, there are some weird search results. Maybe sites ranking that you feel do not deserve to be ranking. There have been bad search result examples like that for years though. That is nothing new. Google is trying to decrease those results, but, like I said, none of us has access to enough data to really grade how they are doing.

Stick to the facts. Leave your feelings out of it.

This will change the optimization techniques

Well after doing some quick research to see if this affects any of my site I found out people have cloned my sites. This is the last time I try to help people anymore.

EMD = 15 years prior to Google existing!

Google - EMD = Nothing much if you not a spammer!

But lets start another rumour that will devalue the Inter'web Lol!

I have a few new sites with decent content that were on page 1 but tanked. They are emd sites but not something ridiculous. Think 'money tips' rather than 'tipsonhowtomakeyourownrobotwhilesavingmoney.com' - if that makes sense. Is it worth continuing with these sites? I picked the domains with the idea of expanding them all into authorities in the niche - I know a lot about each and so I know I can add value. Or would it be better to start over and pick a brand name?

Also - one site that is very high quality (basically my masters thesis with edits and broken into sections, edited), emd but with not much potential for authority (very very niche topic) tanked. While it wasn't monetized it's annoying as it was my 'pet project'. Would it be better to pick a wider niche that this fits into and then do an authority site? Just seems annoying as I know this content is high quality, well researched, of academic publishing standard (something similar I did was published) and it still tanked! I guess mini sites are not worth it regardless of quality? Size and quality the only way forward?

:/ why google is changing algo's. there is no need of this. Feeling sorry for people who gets effected by this update

No need to start panicking just yet. Wait for a few days or even weeks to see how far your sites are affected. Some sites may even do a dance - meaning they go down and might come back up a little later.

google penalized only low quality site if your site has exact domian name as well as good backlink and fresh content why google penalize you.......

What makes me laugh at this hypocritical move from google is

Mattcutts.com - His EMD still ranks perfectly fine for his site - lol

now lets take a look at this apparently low quality site that got hit really hard for their pregnancy EMD, ranking number one before the update.

Your Pregnancy Week By Week | Pregnancy.co.uk

oh yes, very low quality indeed! perhaps they should have called the site Hellfor9months.com Perhaps that would rank better for the KW pregnancy.

So Matt Cutts website is NOT really about Matt Cutts at all and more about the pathetic attempts google makes to be a better search engine.

So why does he still rank for Matt Cutts?
Obviously his EMD site gets preferential treatment

I see way too much gloating from complete losers in this one. The next update, Google might just come for you too.

I wonder if the TLD matters too. Also I don't see Google doing a great job at cleaning "Low quality EMD". I was checking several low competition keyword phrases and result is interesting. for example,

"cheap instant cameras" - #1 is an EMD .com , a blog which has 0 content !

Low quality EMD still in number one: "D Drol"

Here's a little food for thought (not saying this is how things work - but from a perspective of someone currently working on a quality classification project with lots of scraped data):

They can train a learning machine using human input data (they have to fill in reports when grading sites right?). Take EMD ONLY data and a large set of attributes, plug into a learning machine and tweak things until things start to work. Now run all EMDs through this filter and see what happens.

OR they could treat each SERP differently and run all top 10 or 20 sites through a filter, compare a bunch of parameters from "good" sites to the EMDs and decide if your EMD is worthy of ranking there or not.

Or literally hundreds of other things... I bet by just looking at word count, internal URL structure and size of site they can eliminate 90% or more of shitty sites for any red flag (such as EMD) with very few false-positives. Throw in readability testing (doable), LSI, titles, meta data, outbound links (regular), internal links, affiliate links, other ad count, image/video data and other stuff and you have so much to work with... that's the reason some of the seemingly borderline cases (of nuked sites) are so difficult to "diagnose".

It just doesn't work the way most of you think it does. Stop saying stuff like his sites are so small (rofl), my content is better, I have 20 pages OMGWTF...

I am just hazarding a guess at what happened, my guess is as good as yours..

However... i have many exact match domains.. Many are 3 keyword domains, very few are 4 or more. Many have dashes in. Most are .com. Some are other extensions.

None of mine got hit.

Why?

I build lots of links to my site, from diverse anchors, from diverse platforms. My sites rank for competitive terms.

Because none of my sites got hit, i am hazarding a guess that the ones that got hit were:

- Sites with really long exact match domains.
- Sites relying on the value of the exact match name without having backlinks.
- Sites with poor panda metrics.

If you have sites that are penalized that were ranking, if you want me to analyse them privately i am happy to do so.

All my sites escaped this update. So right now that is my best guess. 2 cents.

This is fantastic news for all EMD owners who produce GOOD QUALITY CONTENT. I have a quality EMD site ranking #1 for approx 10,000 searches p/m. Other EMD rivals in the top 10 have all disappeared I am very happy with this update!

I think the lesson in 2012 was to not rely to Google for traffic or your income (adsense).

I think there will be a flood of EMDs on the domain after market after this update. The jig is up for EMDs. If you have a few that have quality content on them, then it's worth trying to recover. But for people trying to start out, forget EMDs now.

just google looks like living at another world where small business/webmasters is not matter anything for them right now.

Usage of emd domains is absolutely normal, even offline practice of many companies like daily news, apple, blackberry - you can find lot of examples.

Even many years before it was a normal practice to open keyword.com sites in msie, was typins domains (i know, it just as example here). So it was natural behavior of web surfers.

More than it, currently absolutely all domains is EMD or PMD. Even wikipedia - Wiki (name), pedia (encyclopedia partial match). Only few domains like xcx43 not in this list because it usually used for other network purposes (usually).

Trouble here is not into EMD/PMD, but into how google determine what it low quality. And what it mean really. But that information is hidden from anybody, so even bugs in their algorithms can lead to this effect, but you will never know.

So how you see most important information about 'what google consider low quality' is hidden from us like usually and only it really matters.

So all this zoo/emd updates really not about content quality, it just about lowering competition in organic search results. Here is roots of this problem - because we don't know anything for real - what is bad or good - may be even two keywords repeation on emd site is enough to tank it. But google will never give you know it, it big and huge secret to support their monopoly. It why them never give you any REAL CLEAR instructions, it just a form of dictatorship.

Just think, you now cannot do lot of things on your website, like put sitewide link to your other site, use contextual links on new site or to new site, put ads where you want it, etc. Why? Because google not allow you it. But purpose of this company is providing WEB SEARCH results, why them ban/penalize sites based on this factors??? (it not a content quality factors!) Huge question, but easy answer - it pure dictatorship.

That guy who in this topic clearly against emd - promoting own services like 'authority sites' and trying to get more his signature views. Argumentation like do you seen quality emd sites?

Yes, I see a lot of quality emd domains with quality content which was tanked after this update. Also it easy to see how many emd domains was purchased at domain auctions for insane money. Do you think owners of that sites created just a low quality junk site on such expensive domain???
Also I more than sure you own some at least PMD sites.

But another question is - peoples want to do something about it or we just will accept this updates like usually do? May be need to create website for peoples who suffering from this updates, small business owners which brand site was tanked by this update and go legal group action???

or another good idea for all peoples/small business who lost own emd/pmd website to write letter to anti-monopoly department in your country about this matter.

Tell inside this email what google totally unclear and used only to remove competitors from their search results and not providing any clear instructions what can do and cannot do (g guidelines is common, not specific in lot of topics). Also attach their stocks history, your sites, trademark/company registration certificate (if it company emd).

That mass actions at least will increase interest of anti-monopoly departments to this company and it can cost google some big $$$

I know that info dude. But i do not think that we should not worry too much for that change. All he said about low quality and low quantity.

i give you some example: search google for : ddrol

see first site (top1 - emd) which even have sample page from default wordpress installation and of course no any normal content, except may be 10 words. How you see it in the top1 position. Good example of 'high quality emd site in google eyes'??? panda, penguin, emd update not affected it.

it show only one thing, their algorithm to recognize what it high or low quality not work in normal way.

BTW, here is something which should be interesting.

There was a german SEO contest some days ago:

Its about "HochgeschwindigkeitsSEO" (it means HighSpeedSeo).

Guess who is on the first places?

See for yourself - and look at the pages itself.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hoch...ient=firefox-a

Low Keyword density? 500 words? Holy crap, no.

You will not notice it when you can't read german but the text is good written & unique.

Now, tell me something about EMDs are dead, that you need aged domains and such.

The .org domain was even kicked up in the SERPS, last time i checked a week ago it was around #5.

I thought the penalties for domains based on keywords was a Google penalty that is 'coming soon' no?

From what I've seen, Google isn't "penalizing" sites. They simply removed the value of having an EMD as a ranking factor.

Now, EMD's are evaluated the same way as everyone else - link quality, content, on-page seo/structure, and arguably social signals - without the advantage of an EMD.

So if you have great content, quality links, good on-page seo, and a social presence you will be fine. But if your ranking was dependent on an EMD...you better start making some changes.

This algo change is no different than any past update and probably any future update. Like with Penguin, if you were dependent on blog network links for your rankings, you got screwed. But if you had a strong, diverse link profile you were unaffected.

To protect yourself from algo changes is as easy as having a diverse link profile, good relevant content, social activity, and for local businesses get listed in as many directories as possible. Being completely dependent on any 1 thing for success is never a good idea.

It truly is that simple.

No, its a penealty - or better a negative ranking malus.

If you EMD did not falls under the negative SEO signals it still goes strong.

Just want to share an odd behavior with this EMD algo update :

An EMD rank might drop severely for the keywords targeted in the domain name, but its rank for other keywords may not be affected or even improves.

For example, given 2 domains - advantagesofemd.com and benefitsofemd.com, advantagesofemd.com may rank higher for "benefits of emd" keywords, while benefitsofemd.com may rank higher for "advantages of emd" keywords. But both keywords basically means the same thing.

I (shamefully) owns 5 EMDs and 4 of them got hit badly. However, I observed that other sites that took my ranking are EMDs as well (in the same category), but not for the same keywords.

Majority of my website where hit by this update.. I am looking for a way on how i can recover. I will appreciate if someone can help me out...

I've noticed that alot of EMD sites are still ranking pretty high. At least in my niches they are. I specifically know of a competitor that has a few EMD sites, with a max of 10 pages and is still ranking first page. They never update their pages, and are linking out to an affiliate site (in each page).

My question: Would i be able to report him to Google? Is it even worth it? Does google react to complaints from others?

Hi all,

I have 3 questions:

1) I have two domains - 1 is defintely an EMD (not the one in my signature), but I've had it since 2005 and I have tons of content that I update regularly on it (articles, video, etc.). I've gotten really good local rankings consistently for it, so I haven't been worried until I read this post - does anyone happen to know if those factors will be taken into account with the algorithm change?

2) Here's my 2nd question - it's about my 2nd domain, which is in my signature (cringe - please don't throw tomatoes - I'm not trolling, I swear!)...I honestly don't know if it counts as an EMD...That site has only been live since Sept. 21st - would it be wise to purchase a completely different domain name? I know that's a lot of trouble, but if I'm going to be "dinged" for it, then it might be worth it to change it early on, before I start to get rankings, if it's actually an EMD...

3) Is there anything (other than changing the domain name) that can be done to counteract the penalty? Would doubling up on good content help?

Thank you for any info!

EMD's are not going anywhere, was working, are working and will be working forever. I can BET and PROVE that. I can see, right now there are two high competitive niche keywords with EMD's are on the 1st page of Google. And to my surprise when I checked few days later, they were ranking even more higher and still they are.

Google want you to be confuse as much as possible, simple and clear. Oh and they are successful doing this as well.

Cheers!

This going to punish only Low Quality Sites with EMD Domains probably.

Wow. Matt said that, I can't believe it many EMD domain doom day.