Google rolled out yet another update on 9/28/2012.
Now they’re going after Exact-Match Domains.
The crack-down is supposed to target low-quality “exact-match” domains.
Here are the latest tweets from Matt Cutts discussing the update:
Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) September 28, 2012
New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) September 28, 2012
However, it seems that even high-quality EMD sites are getting hit.
Here are a few comments from site owners around the web…
In fact one of the sites has been in competition with another of my sites for the same term. The EMD was far better and it has now gone, the other site remains in position 2.”
Having thoroughly compared the quality of content, quantity of content, design/look and user experience metrics of those hit and those unaffected, I can not see any difference whatsoever.
I feel like the most likely explanation is that human “quality-raters” have been sent to all sites, some gave a thumbs up, others a thumbs down, and these (possibly subjective) ratings have decided whether the sites live or die.”
Oh, and Bounce rate good and time on site good. The products are all high end mens bags that are not in the normal stores but Google want to show just the same bags but from large retail sector shops.”
There’s an exact-match .net ranking #6 that has ZERO content. All it has is an H1 with the primary keywords, a link to a related Wikipedia article, a link to their twitter feed and a Google+ “recommend this” button with 9 votes.
That’s it. Yeah, really, that’s it. Nothing else. And it is not well-linked at all either. Very few links to speak of.
What was that about “low quality” filters?”
So I am seeing something very similar. I have some EMD’s that got hit and some that didn’t. I dont see any correlations between the sites that got hit and those that didn’t.
Not sure if this gets us closer to answers but I wonder if G was able to determine what is a EMD and what is not an EMD. Its certainly possible, but harder, for a algo.
“bluewidgets” and “greenwidgets” one is a EMD and one is a company name. If someone is not in that business it could be hard to tell the difference. You would have to know that bluewidgets is a product and greenwidgets is just the company. Both terms could even get equal traffic. Splitting those apart is possible but not trivial.
I am leaning toward a general change in how domainnames are treated. Partly because I am seeing non EMD’s hit in the same time frame and I don’t think its chance.”
Anyway just a thought wouldn’t be the first time a smoke screen came out of the Google camp!”
Keep in mind though… Google is known for releasing aggressive updates and then drawing them back in over time.
So let’s wait for the dust to settle before drawing too wide of a conclusion.
Related Articles:
Algo Change Targets Low Quality Exact Match Domains
New Google update targeting exact match domains announced
