The return of exact match domains in Google? Or not?! The financial sector assessed
Posted By Andy,
April 4th, 2013
Take The Kardashians for example. No matter how much you despise something or know how damaging it can be to the bigger picture, they always come back, to your annoyance. Well, in the SEO community (in the financial sector in particular), we’ve seen an ugly friend rear their ugly head once again – the EMD. Although, not to be confused with a digital sexually transmitted disease, the EMD is an acronym for ‘Exact Match Domains’ – so websites that rank well, simply by having the name of the keyword within the domain itself.
We also have a PMD (a not so serious one), which is ‘Partial Match Domains’, who have also come juggernanuting back into the fold. Here, I am to explore the return of the EMD in the UK within different sectors and offer some possible insight into why this may have happened.
The impact of Facebook’s Graph Search on traditional search
Posted By rich,
January 16th, 2013
Facebook yesterday announced their well anticipated entry into the search world with the unveiling of their new ‘Graph Search‘, an upcoming product allowing users to search based on the recommendations and interests of their connections.
How does Facebook Graph Search work?
In what Zuckerberg aptly referred to as ‘some really neat stuff’, Graph Search will aim to index all the posts, shares, photos, and ‘likes’ of users and deliver them through the use of simple and concise language. Typical uses of Graph Search will differ from the every day queries searchers bombard Google with; searches are entered in natural language such as “What are some good restaurants nearby?”, with results generated from each individual’s social graph. One senior Facebook engineer gave the example of “Who are single men?” as a query which would return a list of single man connections, raising the additional possibility Facebook may also be entering the online dating market. Non-descript and custom filters can also be applied, again in natural language, to any search. So continuing with the dating theme, the query “Single women who appreciate E.L. James” could be used to better filter down results.
Partial match domains reappearing in Google UK?
Posted By Andy,
December 27th, 2012
It wasn’t too long ago that we ran a test to see how Google reduced the amount of EMDs (exact match domains) and PMDs over the past three years. We concluded that this was a change that occurred over twelve months, rather than overnight and Google had been actively trying to reduce the strength assigned to EMDs and PMDs within the SERPs.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve noticed in one sector, the inclusion of a number of PMDs that really should not be on page one.
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Who is winning the Christmas online race in the UK?
Posted By Andy,
November 26th, 2012
I can only speak on behalf of myself but I’m not the best Christmas gift purchaser of all time – in fact, I’m not the best gift purchaser full stop! Practicality (or indeed a hug coupon) doesn’t really go down too well with my wife, who always goes one step beyond in regards to a thoughtful gift. I don’t know if I’m alone in this Neanderthal world, but there are plenty of websites out there to help you gentlemen out.
I’ve investigated the early leaders targeting men for Christmas gifts and their positioning within Google UK (The Web).
Google returning more UK specific results?
Posted By Andy,
November 5th, 2012
I will be expanding on this subject a little more, but wanted to post this chart to inform you of some changes I noticed in Google over the weekend.
www.facebook.com has been replaced by gb-en.facebook.com within the UK SERPs, which appears to be a Google change, rather than a Facebook inspired one.
Google EMD update and PMD decline over time
Posted By Andy,
October 22nd, 2012
When Matt Cutts or the Google Webmaster team release information on an algorithm change, social networks, forums and comments boxes are all at a flutter with disgruntled webmasters claiming the big G is out to get them. It’s nothing personal, Google has its own agenda and I’m sure Mr Cutts hasn’t got a big dart board with your face on it. One thing I do when I receive a piece of information like this (the algorithm change not that Mr Cutts has my face on a dartboard) is check out the data myself, rather than taking Google’s word for it.
Exact Match Domain (EMD) Algo update
With this in mind I wanted to review the recent EMD (exact match domain) update, which looks at lowering domains of low quality that match the search query. Changes have actually been in place for a long time following a change by Google allowing these domains to rank in the first place! Take a look at our findings for both ‘exact match domains’ and ‘partial match domains’.
Many thanks to our junior search engineer Danny Wood for providing data and insight to this post.
Google updates trends and redirects insights
Posted By Andy,
September 28th, 2012
Keyword research is pivotal to any online strategy. SEOs around the world know the importance of obtaining useful data on specific terminology that will convert traffic through organic search. There are many ways in obtaining this information, I usually start by interviewing an expert in the field – sometimes this is independent of the client so that you obtain an unbiased view of the product/service.
Any serious SEO should also obtain data from additional channels (such as PPC or social) that highlight current interaction with your audience. Then there is the discovery and keyword refining phase, which is where some of Google’s free tools come in. This morning I noticed that Google Trends has had a facelift, whilst Google Insights is no more.
Google provide currency counter within SERPs
Posted By Andy,
September 26th, 2012
Google have been roundly criticised over the years for using their position as search market leaders to push their own products/services. Although many will state that Google can do what they want with their search engine, many of their changes do lead to ‘anti competition‘ remarks, especially when its one of your websites that is losing out to the big G!
There are so many changes to Google, in terms of functionality and toolset offering, that is hard to keep up, but I wanted to share with you another addition to the SERPs that satisfies your query before you have to click on a result.
rel=alternate tag cross domain study
Posted By Andy,
Having created an original rel=alternate study that focused on internal content, I wanted to test whether or not you could setup this on a cross-domain basis. I’m very pleased to announce that you can indeed set this up on a cross domain basis and I’ve included my results below.
iPhone 5: Who was positioning in Google?
Posted By Andy,
September 24th, 2012
There might not be as much of a buzz about the latest iPhone release nowadays, however there are still many Apple enthusiasts that were camping out to get their hands on an iPhone 5.
Here we take a look who was on page one in Google for the build up to the release and how this compares to that of the iPhone 4 release date.
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