It's NOT an EMD Penalty!!

by Chucky

Posted: 12 years ago 21 replies

Hey warriors,

Don't mean to contradict anybody, just my observations!

I have a limited number of sites that are typically referred to as EMD sites (micro-niches; few pages; main targeted kw=domain name=website name).

Only one of these got hit with this update! As usual, this was also the best of the lot, meaning the one earning the most money and the one best optimized - on page and off page.

All the other EMD sites that didn't get hit - on page factors were optimized almost as same as the one that got hit, but I hadn't done off page optimization - no hardcore link building campaigns.

My conclusion = the update didn't just target EMDs, but it targeted over-optimization. With an EMD site going after one keyword and one anchor text which also happens to be on the domain name, H1, 1st sentence, internal links etc. etc., over-optimization is more obvious/easily detectable by a algorithm change.

In contrast, a larger (authority) site would go after multiple keywords/anchor text, and these keywords are not necessarily on the domain. Therefore over-optimization for one or few keywords, both on page and off page are almost impossible.

I also see changes in rankings for authority pages whose title tag looked 'over' optimized. For example there's a page in one of my niches with a title tag like 'best electronic bed raiser chairs help weak people get out of bed' (obviously I made that up). If that was the real title tag, 'electronic bed raiser' was hyper-competitive and 'best electronic bed raiser' was less competitive.

The above page jumped from #3 to #1 for 'electronic bed raiser' and fell from #1 to #3 for 'best electronic bed raiser'. The YouTube video that jumped from about #5 to #1 goes "what is the best electronic bed raiser". "what is the" makes it less over-optimized and thus Google ranked it above the other which was more over-optimized.

I see that kind of a pattern on several other pages as well.

To wrap it up, it looks more like an over-optimization penalty and the presence of the EMD makes those kinds of sites more vulnerable to such penalties.

Thoughts?
Chucky

#emd #penalty

SuzanneH

12 years ago

According to Matt Cutts, it's an EMD algo change:

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

Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality "exact-match" domains in search results.

Some will argue that he's not always up front though.

Suzanne

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boxoun 12 years ago

I've been saying same stuff past 2 days. Nice to see confirmation.
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SangGuna 12 years ago

Well that make a sense why people having problem with the new update..
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- icoachu 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by SangGuna
  
  Well that make a sense why people having problem with the new update..
  
  lots of domainers losing money on this because not everyone has the time/resources to build up beefy sites based on EMD longtails. Say goodbye to thin content sites based on EMD longtails.
  
  I'm not saying EMDs are dead, far from it. Just be ready to put in real content and real work.
  
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Bryan V

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Chucky

I also see changes in rankings for authority pages whose title tag looked 'over' optimized. For example there's a page in one of my niches with a title tag like 'best electronic bed raiser chairs help weak people get out of bed' (obviously I made that up). If that was the real title tag, 'electronic bed raiser' was hyper-competitive and 'best electronic bed raiser' was less competitive.

The above page jumped from #3 to #1 for 'electronic bed raiser' and fell from #1 to #3 for 'best electronic bed raiser'. The YouTube video that jumped from about #5 to #1 goes "what is the best electronic bed raiser". "what is the" makes it less over-optimized and thus Google ranked it above the other which was more over-optimized.

I think just this one instance is far too little to draw that conclusion.

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Anil Kint 12 years ago

@OP thats true. I have seen some of my websites penalized. Those sites are in a way over optimized in the sense that - there was too much keyword density, the articles have about 10 LSI keywords in each of them. Apart from these sites were above 95% optimized when using "Easy WP SEO" plugin. There were doing really well so far in terms of ranking but things seem to have changed a littlebit.
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MikeFriedman 12 years ago

There was at least one other algorithm update rolled out at or near the same time as the EMD update. Sites may have been caught up in that.
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Weedy92 12 years ago

I agree, it's not EMD. It's a general over optimization update..
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PerformanceMan 12 years ago

This latest update by Google seems to follow the direction they've been heading in. Too much exact anchor text is no longer a quality signal. Lots of backlinks with the same anchor text used to tell Google 'yes, this site is about keyword keyword keyword.' Now they seem to view these links as manipulation.

The RX is to lighten up on exact anchors and vary up your anchor text. That's been a good idea since February of this year IMHO.
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Focused Action

12 years ago

let's be honest here - we do not have a clue how google really works. there are probably thousands of examples people can show whereby the google search results would seem to "conflict" with what we think all of these updates are trying to do.

i do know one thing - if you build a business that totally relies on organic traffic from google, then you have built a business that could be wiped out in 1 day! might want to consider an alternate business plan.

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justme007

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Focused Action

... if you build a business that totally relies on organic traffic from google, then you have built a business that could be wiped out in 1 day! might want to consider an alternate business plan.

My thoughts exactly. I build sites that are not reliant on just one other business entity.

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stockpost 12 years ago

My sites are directories on EMD.
Basically niche EMD min one + year old with few thousand listings on each, they are not ranking for the main keyword now.

so, I can say it is a EMD kill. Most of the listings on those sites are handpicked non junk sites.
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brettb 12 years ago

No, it's not an EMD penalty. My crappy EMD I bought on the forum for $100 (cheapgreenwidgets.com) has risen in the rankings, while my other sites got killed.

My alternative business plan is a join venture with an owner of a far bigger site than mine. He's immune to Google updates, I know SEO + programming. I think we could do a lot together.
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Chucky

12 years ago

Thanks all, for your input,

I see a few posts here and there that are consistent with my observations.

Here's an example from here.

Originally Posted by blueorca17

I completely agree with this.

I have several EMD's and a couple of them disappeared, but the only difference between the ones that disappeared and the ones that still rank #1 is the backlink profile...

Edit:Oh yes, and I forgot to mention that everything is EXACTLY the SAME on all sites EXCEPT the backlinking.

Anyways, too early to draw any conclusions, but seems like it's a over-optimization penalty overall. Probably a mixture of both on-page and off-page factors.

Seriously, can't we IMers get together and put up our own search engine?

Thanks

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ilee 12 years ago

I think it is to do with EMD because one of my sites only bombed out of it's EMD and not it's other keywords. Maybe over optimization but I stand by my technique of not worrying about numbers.
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Jason Perez O'Connor 12 years ago

Tell you what type of EMDs are still working fine ;D Names of famous or semi-famous people.
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UMS 12 years ago

It's a big mistake to look at Google changes in isolation.

Check the following Twitter convo with Matt Cutts regarding EMDs

Matt "Multiple algos are rolling out all the time. Likely those sites weren't affected by EMD update but by another algo."

Gregory"Thank you matt but all this happened during the past 3 days. Has another update happened during this time?"

Matt "yes. 500+ algo launches/year mean 1-2 a day. I know of at least one other algo rolling out over same timeframe for example."
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radivoj

12 years ago

I also lost 2 sites they were ranked onto first page of google but I give up on these two sites the reason it was not profitable in term of affiliate conversion it has been 10 months since I give up on them but still they were ranked on first page they drop out of top 100 also both of this 2 sites were optimized with SEO Pressor having H1 H2 H3 tag with kw underline and keyword density above 2% but I haven't build any links to these sites 10 month already but I think the reason of losing the ranking may be "over-optimized" ON page the rest of my other sites which is 20 + I haven't notice any changes in the ranking...only these two ...again I notice some sites in other niches that were ranked on first page for about 6 month already and now has totally vanished from the first page and now they are all the way to page 70-80 but they have not have any SEO optimized page so it may not be only ON page factor ...

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Chucky

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Anil Kint

@OP thats true. I have seen some of my websites penalized. Those sites are in a way over optimized in the sense that - there was too much keyword density, the articles have about 10 LSI keywords in each of them. Apart from these sites were above 95% optimized when using "Easy WP SEO" plugin. There were doing really well so far in terms of ranking but things seem to have changed a littlebit.

Originally Posted by radivoj

I stopped using these SEO plugins since Panda/Penguin just like making the keyword bold, italic, underlined and hyperlinked. You have to kind of optimize your pages, otherwise do we let ranking to be completely random? But where do we draw the line? As of now, I have no idea!

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

There was at least one other algorithm update rolled out at or near the same time as the EMD update. Sites may have been caught up in that.

Yup that's what I'm learning today and that explains a lot of inconsistencies different people have been observing!

Originally Posted by PerformanceMan

This latest update by Google seems to follow the direction they've been heading in. Too much exact anchor text is no longer a quality signal. Lots of backlinks with the same anchor text used to tell Google 'yes, this site is about keyword keyword keyword.' Now they seem to view these links as manipulation.

The RX is to lighten up on exact anchors and vary up your anchor text. That's been a good idea since February of this year IMHO.

Couldn't agree more!

Thanks

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hamcreek 12 years ago

Some my EMD site was down.... Just my opinion the quality content is must, including ; 3 images, 1 video, keyword density 2%
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gapinfotech 12 years ago

On September 28th, 2012 at exactly 1:43 PM PST, Matt Cutts of Google issued a minor weather report of an upcoming algorithmic change. This change seeks to “devalue”, or place less emphasis and importance on “low quality” exact match domains or EMD’s. As always Cutts was ambiguous, or rather refrained from explaining in further detail what exactly he meant by “low quality”, and how exactly the algorithm goes about determining quality of individual web pages, however if anything, the Panda and the subsequent Penguin updates served as a good example of the types of signals the search engines consider when looking at “quality”. Furthermore Cutts wasn’t exactly clear in explaining whether this was a penalty or simply a filter
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It's NOT an EMD Penalty!!

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