How does google rank a site based on domain name?

yup, you would but proximity does matter, but if the domain name was not available and you chose one in your example and had more links pointing to your site that says "cats eat dogs", then you'll out rank that site (catseatdogs.com)

Basically Google is just being more specific with what they are willing or not willing to put up with. For instance:

* Grabbing hundreds of links as fast as you can, or link farming, is still a big no-no. As I've always said, build your site well with good SEO and you'll get links naturally.
* "Sticky" sites, or sites that keep users coming back for whatever reason, are going to rank well in Google.
* Huge amounts of content added all at once will send up a warning flag (spam!). Add good content on a regular basis but don't go nuts.

I'd like to know who won?

The cat or the dog?

:p

In my experience google will not rank getthinnow.com, nowgetthin.com the same.

there is a high probability that getthinnow and nowgetthin won't appear on the same
search result.

This opinion is reached based on my year of experience doing SEO..

As for the method google use to rank a page, I have no clear evidence or proof

I can only say from my experience a more trafficked site has higher page rank than those that has low, even if the site with more traffic has lesser links..

This opinion, again, was only reached based on my experience. Ohh and I was able to get several of my sites in google first page for some general keywords not some long tailed ones...

I have several "out of order" keyword domains that I have active websites on and they rank quite well (top 5 on google) without a lot of advanced SEO tactics. I have WP platform running and just tweaked my title to the "reversed" or target keyword. Started posting about once a week and it took about a week to rank in the top 5 for several of my targets. Write posts targeting your keywords and be sure to title those as appropriate and use various target keywords in your post slugs.

Hope this helps a little!

Jim

The more often your keyword appears in the URL the better. This includes the domain, and also the page URL.

For example, cateatsdog.com/cateatsdog.html or cateatsdog.com/cat-eats-dog.html would have more weight than just cateatsdog.com/page1.html or site.com/cat-eats-dog.html

Hello,

Having a targeted keyword as your domain is what google can not contemplate about, I set up a blog without post and backlinks but a targeted keyword as my domain, it automatically apears on google 5th position on the first page, after a post it moved to 3rd postion. You can see the power of the domain, what off if i really start posting more post and geting backlinks..? then no one could compete that keyword with me in google's postion. but however, if you dont have the keyword as your domain, you can still be ranked high if you have more backlinks and high PR higher than the person having the domain.

The difference is simple as this analogy...

related keyword domain - you could need 3000 backlinks and PR=3 to be on google no. 1 ranking

target keyword domain - could need only 50 backlinks and PR=1 to be on google no. 1 ranking

In conclusion, more work for you if you dont get the targeted keyword as domain.

Hope this ilustration helps.....

I do think you will still rank well. Think about it, the domain name can only add relevance. Therefore, all else being equal, dogeatscat.com is better than alldogsgotoheaven.com. However, all else will not be equal, and you will be competing against sites that, although they don't have the keywords in the domain name, they do a lot of other more important SEO work. Low competition isn't always the key - the quality of the competition is what matters. If your keyword is getting lots of searches, don't bank on yourself being the only person who knows about this. You may be one of the few, but the few others could very well prove to be stiff competition.

My Case Study:
If you target the specific keywords, in the same order in which they are being searched, then you will very likely be number one in Google even if you do a mediocre job with SEO. I say this because I have a site that I have only installed WordPress on with the All-in-One SEO plugin. I have written almost now content other then a few very short product reviews. My site ranks number one (for the past year!) for the keywords I'm targeting. I recently let the domain expire, so now the suspended page is number one - just checked and I actually have a double listing, "suspended" being the first lol. I credit all of this to the fact that I have the keywords in my title and a couple of tags with the same phrase.

Switching the words around in the search phrase doesn't appear to have any effect in my case (still number 1). Neither phrase is that competitive, 500k for the proper order and 450k with the reversed order of keywords.

is really depends on how you search in google.... if someone type cat eat dog..then cateatdog.com will appear first..because the keyword always appear from left to right

The closer you get to having the keywords in the correct order the better, of course its not everything. Correct backlinks are very key. So yes the order will matter, but getting the keywords in the title any is good as long as it still is catchy.

Well... thanks for all the replys and thoughts...

I'm still not clear on this...
Maybe we should make a poll

Some great info here. Food for thought for my next domain name. Thank you