EMD update a penalty? OR does it simply devalue an EMD's weight?

There is a good article on WebPro News about the EMD algo update. http://www.webpronews.com/google-emd-update-appears-to-have-had-a-substantial-impact-2012-10

It got me thinking, is the EMD update a penalty? OR does it simply devalue an EMD's weight?

I don't know, but i get the feeling that somehow this is a penalty rather than a simple lessening of the EMD's power. I say this because none of my EMDs have dropped in ranking. If there was a complete devaluing of EMDs then shouldn't all EMDs suffer?

If it is a penalty type update then my gut tells me that the new Google algo looks at your EMD keywords, then it tries to match them to your page title, internal linking anchors and content like H1s which only contain this exact match keyword. Then it may look at anchors to see if you have a high ratio of exact match anchor backlinks(like an extension of penguin) for the EMD keyword. If you're heavy on all of them then it shows you are trying to alter your ranking rather than help users, so you get the penalty.

Now it could be that the algo has not hit my domains yet, but i think there are a lot of EMD domains doing fine.

It seems like Google is trying to bully webmasters into better quality sites by laying Google-mines just waiting to explode, not caring about collateral damage.

What do you guys think?

It seems too heavy handed to me to be a devaluation... Not to say it won't settle down and ranks will return (somewhat), but at this stage I'm of the opinion they've been penalised.

I was wondering the same thing as I dont seem to have been touched really.

I think a lot of people are wrong when they say that Google targeted EMD's with this update.

Google targeted low quality EMD's with this update and not EMD's as a whole.

So I believe to trigger the penalty/devaluation you need to have an EMD as well as some other signals combined.

Whether its a penalty or devaluation though is yet to be seen.

I would imagine that a lot of the on site factors you mentioned help contribute to the low quality EMD slap

it is a penalty. I still rank #1 for the exact match keyword, but penalized(no where to be seen) with the singular of my EMD and my topics were diverse, ranked for many keywords, have over 100 pages of original high quality content, few selfmade links, lot of natural links... and all my longtail has dissapeared, also all self made images were ranking highly as I am the only one in my industry covering in depth my topics.. I put a lot of effort.. and everything was wiped out..except ranking for the exact match..
I think the algo (as u said) picks up high ratio of exact match anchor on site/off site and adsense on the account.. as most of the EMDs live on adsense...
the problem is that on my EMD singular (i am no where to be seen) and have a very little concentration of exact anchor on site / off site on my EMD = url of the site I still rank #1 and have very high ratio of exact match on-site and off-site .. this puzzles me

It makes no sense to me. I have had 4 sites targetted by this. All are nowhere to be seen. Yes, 2 of them were MNS adsense sites with 6-10 pages of articles, videos and pictures. All unique content, but obviously designed for ad clicks and to generate an income.

The other two were high quality 100's of pages of unique hand written content, with merely a splattering of ads as any other website has to help with paying its bills.

One of these was what I classed as my main site. It has a well liked facebook fanpage, has plenty of G+'s and receives some good traffic from the likes of Reddit and Twitter. This site was also blasted out of the serps. This is a .co.uk perfect emd (no hyphens or words in or around the keyword), which gets 10k searches a month. It's still getting traffic due to its popularity outside of google searches, but I was ranking well so have seen quite a dip in numbers.

I cannot say it has been devalued as it's also lost rankings for small search volume keywords that it ranked well for with just decent onsite seo. I'm talking every single keyword, not just the domain name. This whole thing to me is a mass penalty aimed to teach people a lesson, not devalue emd's. Maybe over time things will start to even out and rest a little, and maybe then it might settle to look more like a devaluation; but at the moment to me this is a penalty, much like a penguin update might slap you.

Yeah I also think it was a penalty for low quality EMDs. All my MNS got hit, they were like < 10 pages, but I'm still seeing quite a few EMDs, with lots of pages and content, ranking.

Anyone got sites that have hit and never used adsense?

Probably nothing but just thought i'd ask.

None of my EMDs use adsense and survived.

Actually guys, i just realised that one of my EMDs seems to have been hit, but only slightly. It is one of four micro-sites which point to the main domain.

It seems like the update hit on the 1st of October.

The F*Ck thing about this update, my site is not number 1 anymore on my brand name.

Geesh.

I'm inclined to agree with Mat and Gorang and say that EMD's have been a haven/outlook for MFA sites.
I don't think it's MFA or EMD, it's the fact that so many EMD's were built to the sort of spec that "Sniper" sites and similar "5 pages of text and some adesne on an EMD" system worked in 2008/9.
They worked really well for years - great idea, well worth doing, but not permanent. I think it's a little naive to think it ever was going to be.

Sure some will slip thorugh the net, and while the shuffle is ongoing there will be some (hopefully temporary) collateral damage to "innocent" sites. BUt from what I see, and the links posted here by those brave enough to fez up with examples of their deranked sites - the sites I'm seeing hit - were pretty crap.

Played the game, earned some serious money, now the rules have changed - the changes were predictable and pretty much completely in line with what Google has said they are TRYING to do for the past 3-4 years.

My biggest surprise is - just how surprised many are that the inevitable has finally happened.
The only surprise should be "how come it's taken Google so long to do what they said they were going to do 4 years ago"

Sadly only have about 15 of my old EMD MFA empire still running (just let them lapse as the hosting and name reg ran out) but they have all been hit. Some had page 2/3 presence in September, most of those are now outside the top 1000. Wish I had a bigger sample of EMD's and MFA's but I got out of that game years ago.
Google.. the inconsistent psychopathic business partner - who just sees you and your site as a profit conduit and you are certainly NOT considered a partner by them.

Scritty

Dued to the different drops we all have, i strongly believe it is a devaluation of the semantic concept carried in the domain !

Google is now like a blind man in a dark using a knife. You never know what would be hit.

D.

I don't think this update has happened in Australia yet, there's a keyword I want to rank for in which I used a BHW service for backlinking. KW1 is currently #6, KW2 is currently #21 but KW3 isn't in the top 100 because the results are dominated by internal pages of two or more well backlinked EMDs.

dubious said:

I don't think this update has happened in Australia yet

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I can confirm that it has. A couple of my own MNS (.com.au's) were hit, and I've noticed some other domains that have been effected.

MrOctopus said:

I can confirm that it has. A couple of my own MNS (.com.au's) were hit, and I've noticed some other domains that have been effected.

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Thanks for letting me know, I guess that if an EMD is backlinked well enough it will stay becuse my competition for that keyword is dominating the first 10 pages of google with emd.com.au/product/aaa , emd.com.au/product/bbb etc.
I can live without it, but I figured it'd be an easy kw because it had so many pages from the same sites in the top 100 results.

I've tested one on my EMD autoblogs that was #4 on the first page and had been penalized for having too many affiliate links.
After my site was penalized and sent to 100+ page, I removed everything on the autoblog and only kept the sample page. This was 5 days ago. Today, my EMD is # 8 on page 1. In conclusion, if your affiliate autoblog gets penalized, just remove everything and start over again and you'll be back on page 1 for a couple of weeks.

It's a penalty. Sites have been wiped out and pushed back 10's of pages even when searching for quotes from them.

Its a penality every one on this forum is crying that there website is moved more then 100 downward

Has anyone addressed the issue of whether or not EMDs are worth the time any longer? If EMDs are penalized, does that mean (hypothetically) when doing a search for "beer forums," a domain parked with "beertalk" would rank better than a site like "beerforums" if they both had the exact same content?

MoosePunch said:

Has anyone addressed the issue of whether or not EMDs are worth the time any longer? If EMDs are penalized, does that mean (hypothetically) when doing a search for "beer forums," a domain parked with "beertalk" would rank better than a site like "beerforums" if they both had the exact same content?

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I think they are not penalised by default. There is now simply an algo in place which likel checks if an EMD site is overly targeting the domain name and penalising the site if it is.