Google's Exact Match Domain (EMD) update

1. 0

   Ethan Greenposted 11 years ago

   So this last few days a few significant things have happened that might have affected traffic:
   
   1. The Hubpages power outage
   2. The potential issues with profiles and amazon links which the team have been working on
   3. A Panda refresh (I think)
   4. The EMD update
   
   The exact match domain update is the one that has stirred the wasps nest across blogs, forums and everywhere anyone who has an exact match domain website could possibly vent their frustration.
   
   Interestingly though, some have suggested it might benefit sites like Hubpages in the long-run. So with all these things happening, what has been your experience this last few days? A lot of people have been complaining about a serious loss of traffic (myself included)
   
   Let's see if we can work out if it is coming from our own exact match URL's or if that is not an issue here, and one of the other points is creating the panic.
   
   Personally I lost a lot of traffic from my best hub. But the main long-tail keywords I was previously ranking highly for were not in the URL. So it doesn't appear to have been the case for me here. However one of my own EMD websites was obliterated. It was not a low quality site in terms of the content already published, but it was in development, and so probably seen as a thin site, and so low quality. My fault for not asking search engines not to crawl it until I had put more effort into it probably.
   
   Any thoughts from anyone about how this EMD update has or will affect your hubs, and personal websites?

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      SimeyCposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I experienced about a 20-25% drop but it is slowly creeping back up - interestingly my impressions (on HP Ads) are about the same as they were and the earnings are higher - not sure what to think of that!!

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   2. 72

      brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I have a hub that has similar keywords to another writer on another site.and is about solving the same technical problem. i wonder about that. Also, we had several people writing with the same keywords  from this site in "the answer a question by making a hub" challenge. The technology hub has both writers on page 1 with the keywords. i wonder if this falls into the Google EMD. Does it have to do with keywords? My traffic is down 50% since Thursday or Friday.

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2. 66

   2uesdayposted 11 years ago

   Just looking at my figures for HubPages apart from the drop when the site was off line not much as changed.

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3. 96

   cryptidposted 11 years ago

   Friday-Saturday was rough, and my traffic took longer that I expected to recover after the outage, but now it's back to normal for a Monday morning.  I don't know why it took so long after the outage.  I don't think I've seen any impact from whatever G has done, at least as far as I can tell.

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      andyozposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      My traffic is down about 30% on what it has been for last few months.  So something has certainly affected my positons in the search engines.

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4. 60

   handsomegeniusposted 11 years ago

   I have sites on keyword targeted domains are still ranking for the exact match keywords as well as they did before.
   
   Buying a whole bunch of domains to set up sniper sites might not be as attractive a strategy as it used to be, but it would be a mistake to discount it completely.  I think a lot of the stuff I've read about how EMDs don't work anymore is grossly exaggerated.  Really, the keywords in a domain are actually a great hint at what the site is likely going to about, and so Google is going to have no interest in ignoring them completely.
   
   In the past, these sites were often set up with scraped/spun or just generally crap content, and were mainly used as support sites in a "content network" - a politer way of saying "blog farm".  Google is getting better and better at smacking these crappy sites.  I think to a large extent these two things get conflated, but there's no rule that says you HAVE to put rubbish content up on a sniper site.

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5. 68

   waynetposted 11 years ago

   My traffic is down around 50% too....there could be many factors, but I can't be arsed to go through them...As I am very busy! cheers now!

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6. 86

   aa liteposted 11 years ago

   My traffic, which is still pretty low, was a bit better after the Panda update, but is now a bit worse after Friday.  However, as with Simey C my impressions and earnings don't really seem to reflect what my views or Google analytics show, for example yesterday I had more impressions and earnings than I expected given my rather low views.
   
   What I find worrying is the quant cast data for the last few days.  It was really low on Friday, as expected because of the outage, but it didn't seem to recover at all on Saturday, which was lower than the Saturdays before, and it is pretty bad on Sunday as well (sunday is the last day shown).  What you need to remember is the bottom of the graph is 200k views, so it is not quite as bad as it looks at first glance.  Still it appears that HP traffic has fallen in the last 3 days in a way that can't just be explained by the outage.  Of course it is only 3 days, which isn't significant unless it continues.
   
   
   

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7. 80

   David 470posted 11 years ago

   My traffic has not returned. I don't think it had to do with the power outage at this point. I'm at my lowest traffic numbers since 2010 (somewhat higher, but not huge)!
   
   Last fall was amazing on HubPages...! But this time, I am not sure if any of these months will be good....I might start writing on my other account that I made 2 years ago -- I hardly used it.

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8. 75

   WriteAngledposted 11 years ago

   I haven't 'see much difference over the last few weeks or so, but tonight my traffic seems to be rising.

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9. 86

   Rachel Roodhardtposted 11 years ago

   Google released Panda 21 yesterday... any Exact Match Domain owners see a change in ranking?

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10. 72

    brakel2posted 11 years ago

    This must be the second EMD. Is that right?  Now, more webmasters will be angry.

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11. 86

    Rachel Roodhardtposted 11 years ago

    No, they've announced a panda update, but last time they sneaked out a load of other algorithms at the same time. Just fishing to see if they did any tweaking of EMD at the same time...

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