Google moves to reduce low quality exact match domains

Internet has become the most trusted source of information for online users. Web world generates a new website at every 5 seconds. A research says that Internet users and online buyers are increased by a significant amount in the past few years. The job of search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and many more is very difficult to choose the best website on the basis of good quality and reliable information. All search engines require keeping their information source updated to provide user what actually they are looking for. This is a challenging situation not only for search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and many but also for webmasters and website owners too. That’s why search engines keep on changing the search algorithm.

Why Google Updates:

These changes are made to improve the search results quality by encouraging high quality website and also sometime by penalizing the websites which are spoiling the search results quality. Google has come up with the lots of algorithmic updates in last few months. Google Panda Updates, Google Penguin Updates, Page Layout Algorithm Changes and other many more algorithm updates which are the examples of filtration of the quality websites by search engines. Among these all, one new update has joined the group and affecting the Google search result deeply, which is “Google Exact Match Domain Update”. Let us have a look at some interesting facts and stats about the EMD update through this post. Google is improving the search quality to get the user more accurate result from this. We will discuss some remedies for EMD update too.

What is EMD, About EMD Update?

When you have a website URL having your primary keyword in it, Google will refer that URL as an “Exact Match Domain”. Marketers were used to own the domain having keyword in it to target high competitive keywords in short period of time, few years back.  Here is what the Google web spam team head – Matt Cuts has told about keywords in domain name. Google was also giving priority to the domains having keywords in it to identify the relevancy those days. Gradually marketers have started creating specific domains for specific keyword, which was clearly spamming the web and spoiling the  search result. “Exact Match Domain Update” was to restrict such web marketers to rank well due to keyword in domain only. Google has stopped giving priority to the keyword in URL. Even it has dropped the ranking of lots of exact matched domain websites among the web.

Effect Of EMD Updates:

The Exact Match Domain update was disclosed on Twitter by Matt Cutt (Google Web Spam Team Head) on 29^th of September 2012. What he has tweeted, “Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results.” According to the Google, the Exact Match Domain update has affected the 0.6% of English – US search queries. This update was specifically to target the low quality Exact Match Domains. With the term Low Quality Web sites you may consider the websites having low back link profiles, websites with non relevant content or keyword oriented content, websites having too much advertisement on it, sites which have scraper content etc. These kinds of websites were affected majorly by this Google update.

This is the one side of this update, at the other side lots of high quality and good websites had also lost their rankings just because of their exact match domain during those days. Google has refreshed the algorithm after few days and rewarded the high quality and genuine websites with the better ranking to solve that issue.

How to deal with EMD:

According to Matt Cutt, Google does more than 500 algorithmic and search quality related changes in a year. So Webmaster should always be conscious and keep eye on the Google updates and find out the ways to save their websites being penalized by Google. Following are few things webmasters should consider if they are affected with the “Exact Match Domain update”.

• This EMD update was to target low quality websites, you must have to improve the quality of your website in terms of content, back link profile and user experience.
• You have to give Google strong signals that your website is not to target some specific term only, and you are also targeting some other keywords for the same page by using different anchor text.
• Regularly update the content of the website. That might be in form of web page or blog.
• Concentrate more on getting relevant back links only
• Try to improve user experience of the site by creating easy navigation, good website design and user friendly website structure. It will reduce the bounce rate which Google considers as a factor of measuring website performance.
• Make a strong social media presence.
• Stay away from Black-Hat SEO techniques.
• And last but most important “Create web site for users, Not for Search Engines”

You can also take help of SEO Expert if the Google has penalized you or you wish to keep your site protected from the Google slap. They are the experienced and professional persons who analyze your site from different technical aspects and can suggest the best practices to keep your business growing.

We will get back to you very soon with the new updates from the Web and Search Engine World.