Google Responds To Exact Match Domain Not Ranking For Christmas Trees

Nov 10, 2020 - 7:41 am 6 by

Christmas Tree Google Exact Match

Got to say, this is an unusual response from Google's John Mueller. In short, someone with an exact match domain asked John why his site is not ranking for its brand name. The web site domain has Christmas Trees in it and the search query he shared a screen shot of showed product listing ads and other ads but not his web site ranking (note, it did not show organic results).

John responded to the question in a bit of a savage way on Twitter - he told the individual to wait until January and check again to see if the site ranks for that keyword phrase. Here are those tweets:

I am not taking a screen shot of the tweets, if either party wants to delete them, sure, go ahead.

A bit more context, this seemed to be a joke:

The thing is, just because your domain name is for a generic query, like Christmas Trees, it does not mean your site should rank for it. The complaint over why a site is not ranking for its own brand name, when the brand name is a generic phrase, is not going to cut it. And no, I do not expect the site to rank well in January.

In fact, John said previous that exact match domains don't get a ranking boost of any kind and previously, Google was on the hunt for spammy exact match domains.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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