Google is at it again. They recently released an update, referred to as the “Exact Match Domain” or “EMD” that is targeting sites that have domain names that match keywords and have poor quality content. What is deemed as quality content is up for debate and is really subjective in my view. Unfortunately, with Google being both judge and jury, this does not bold well for many sites on the Internet. I’m sure most webmasters feel that their sites have quality content, but I certainly wouldn’t put my faith in Google seeing it that way.
What Exactly Is The EMD Algorithm?
Matt Cutts tweeted that a new algorithm update would be released on September 28, 2012 which targets exact match domains. The purpose of this update is to lower the search ranking of websites that use domain names that match common keywords. In the past a site could rank well in search if it used a domain name that matched a popular keyword. An example of this is having a site whose content is about “baking cookies” with a domain name called “bakingcookies.com”. Chances are this site would rank well the domain name, content and keywords all pertaining to baking cookies.
If you are not familiar with Matt Cutts, he is the head of web spam at Google.
When I started my blog, my thinking was to use “The Money Making Idea” because at the time the keyword “money making ideas” was low competition and was getting 12,000 searches per month globally and over 8,000 locally. For a time, this worked out well. At one point I ranked on page one of Google for “money making ideas” and the traffic was rolling in. Unfortunately, all good things are sure to come to an end and my site got sucker punched by Google’s Penguin update several months ago. Instead of crying the blues, I decided to continue adding content and completely ignore these irritating updates and my site has recovered a lot of the lost traffic.
I’m not sure, nor do I care if this latest update will affect my site. I find that it makes more sense to focus on writing quality content and using social media or other methods to market your site. Google’s dynamic nature makes it very difficult to find a consistent method of increasing your sites rank without the risk of Google making a change that makes your strategy null and void.
What To Do If Your Site Gets Affected?
After Panda and Penguin went on their search and destroy missions, I saw a number of SEO sites claiming to have the formula to fix a site that had been affected by the algorithm. To date, I believe I have only seen two sites that actually recovered and these sites were hit with manual penalties and not algorithmic changes. My guess, is the EMD penalty will be the same and the webmasters whose sites are affected will have to make some tough decisions. If you have a business that relies heavily on Google then your only option may be to either create a new site with a different name or pay for traffic. In my view the end game is for Google to squeeze site owners into paying for traffic if they want their businesses to survive. They may state that it is for the sake of quality search, but I believe there is more to this.
In the end, you should never have all your eggs in one basket and even if you have a site that continues to rank well after all the Google algorithm update releases, it could be the next update release that tanks your site.
Tags: emd, exact match domain, website rank
