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WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster, posted a thread at WebmasterWorld documenting a pattern he is seeing recently with Google. He is asking, not telling, if people agree or disagree with his theory. In short, he is noticing that Google is apparently ranking sites that have their keywords in their URL/domain better then Google has in the recent past.
One of my sites with the keyword in the domain (no hyphens) jumped up to number one and started making unprecedented amounts of money. I checked it's backlinks and referrals and DMOZ/Yahoo but no change. The only change was Google giving my site a boost because, and I can't explain this any other way, because of the keyword in the domain. I've not done any promotion to that site at all. Zero.I've also been seeing an unusual amount of parked domains that are exact matches for the keyword sitting at the top, although they seem to have been dialed back today.
Like with most of these threads, some agree and some disagree.
I have seen some cases of this being correct and some cases of this not being correct.
Of course, there must be some other factors that are hard for these webmasters to isolate. So the discussion continues...
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Gerry Grant
04/25/2007 03:05 pm
Using a keyword in the URL has a few benefits. First off it will now have the keyword in all the kinks that are created. Second it will have more clicks because people see the keyword in the URL. I also believe that Google rewards having the keyword in the domain.
Barry Schwartz
04/25/2007 03:08 pm
Yes, but we are talking about this new recent post. But thanks for adding those points.
Michael Martinez
04/25/2007 04:52 pm
Here we go again. SEO: "I shaved my head this morning and suddenly discovered that my shoes stink." SEO runs to forum: Hey guys! Shaving your head makes your shoes stink." Moral of the story: If you don't make an effort to show cause-and-effect by repeating the process, you've got nothing to talk about. And as far as this particular subject goes, Google has OPENLY ACKNOWLEDGED that having keywords in the URL (not just the domain) helps.
Stefano
04/25/2007 10:12 pm
i think the main "other factor" is higher ctr for pages with keywords in URL. if so, just combine this with "what google thinks about keywords in URL" and you can (or cannot) have an improvement in ranking.