EMD's are (almost) dead - now it's official official!

Google announced it several times, now seomoz verified it: EMD's have less and less value, to the point where one should ask if having a brandable name massively outweighs the minimal seo benefit from an EMD...
Of all metrics seomoz analyzed for 2011, the declining importance of EMD's was one of the biggest movements in seo factors. Nevertheless, the survey (second graph) shows that most still believe in EMD's.


Might make one think about stopping to use EMD's and focus on brandable names instead... Thinking one step further, how long does it take until google uses EMD's as another factor in determining if a website is spam? Hmm.

Thankyou so much for the information about about emds and l see that its official according to you will take on board the information you have provided here

semilar said:

Thinking one step further, how long does it take until google uses EMD's as another factor in determining if a website is spam? Hmm.

Click to expand...

Anything is possible when it comes to G, we`ll just have to wait and see(uhh i made a rhyme) ).

I will believe this when I start seeing it in my research. I still have a bunch of EMDs that rank and I still see a ton of my competitors ranking with EMDs. I will believe it when I see it.

whilst it is making money people will still use them

EMD's still gives an advantage. It just don't have that big an impact as in the past. Nothing new about that - but it still gives an advantage in SERP's.

If you look at other stuff, it seems Google is going to be focusing more on social. If EMD is getting a lot of tweets and shares on facebook, Google will take that into account.

I say focus on the social part the most. Now I have to figure out how to get thousands of users to tweet or share link on facebook. Any service out there for this?

Also interesting is what factors seomoz uses to determine authority and branding... Like how often a domain is mentioned on wikipedia, in news, press releases, if it has a facebook / twitter site etc.

The main problem I see with EMD's is that in 90% when I see the top 10, I can tell which results are IM sites just by looking at the domains. If I can see it easily...

EMD's still seem to have some (decreasing) value. My guess is in low competition serps it still can help a lot. I think about it that way: The less factors Google has available to compute the serps for a certain keyword, the more important single factors get. I see that every day for keywords where there is no real content availiable, google reacts by showing duplicates, and crappy content. Shit seems to be a better choice then no results in Googles Eyes.

I.e. a low competition kw where 9/10 have no onpage seo, those results most of the time have no proper offpage seo either (anchor text, # of quality pagelinks). No onpage seo, no off page seo, now other factors gain value, such as EMD's. But is it worth the price in domain cost (or even buying it from someone) when all you have to do is have proper onpage seo and some quality backlinks plus the opportunity to look non-spammy and brandable with another domain name?

I said it a few weeks ago, it seems google is giving more and more value to big authority sites like about.com, wiki, etc, and the small mini sites are falling off the map. I guess Google wants to put more trust in established aged sites, no matter how shitty the information is. I see some terrible articles ranked high simply because it's an established site.

I think EMD will still have a bit of value.

EMD has still more value than other domains. Maybe not as much as before but still enough to make a difference.

Totally BS.

that article in the OP doesn't make the point that they're dead or almost dead, only that it seems to be less of an influence than it used to be. considering that it has been a very strong factor, even with dimnished influence it could still be a strong factor.

IMO EMDs will always hold some preferences...

I still see most effect from EMDs will see

I believe this will be fixed up to a certain point. But, realistically they can't. Take this for instance.

I am looking for a specific company in big G. What do I do? I type the company name, more than likely that company has an EMD with some sort of keyword phrase. Big G will look like an A**hole if they give me irrelevant results.

My question to you is, how do they know what are company names vs EMD's. I'd like to see someone write an algo for that..