Google EMD Changes

[Robert DBAKeymaster]

The power of an Australian Exact Match Domain Name.

I know “technically” that Google, at the moment, are saying EMD’s won’t hold SEO weight over standard or brandable domain names from now on, but in terms of SEO, I believe an EMD is so powerful you don’t have to be in the very first spot. An EMD is still going to be “chosen” more from the first page than another website that is beating it with better SEO. Which means, to me, that an EMD is still very valuable and still holds a lot of weight in search results. Basically, I don’t believe these changes are going to diminish the .com.au EMD’s at all.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say I want to buy flowers for my wife.
And let’s say I just moved to Melbourne.
So I hop onto Google and as fast as my little fingers can type, I type in: Melbourne Florist.
I see 4 names at the top of my search.
1. Flowersacrossmelbourne.com.au
2. MelbourneFlorist.com.au
3. RichmondFlorist.com.au
4. Melbourne.Florist
I can only speak for myself here, but I honestly would HIT MelbourneFlorist.com.au first – every time. And, if fact, if I lived in Richmond, I believe I would hit RichmondFlorist.com.au first before any of them, because I would want to support local. Which would mean the flower shop in Richmond who invested in that EMD (although they are coming third on the page) made a great solid investment because (assuming their website content is great) they just made themselves an easy $100 and they now have a customer for life if the flowers are nice and fresh and my wife loves me again.

In this example, the SEO that had been performed for MelbourneFlorist.com.au was obviously not as good as the SEO performed for Flowersacrossmelbourne.com.au – because, EMD’s are not holding their SEO weight anymore, which is why MelbourneFlorist.com.au has ranked 2nd in this example and not 1st in the search results…. but regardless…. …and stay with me here…

… even though the EMD Domain Name is 2nd (in terms of SEO placing) to a weaker domain name (a three-word .com.au) the EMD DOMAIN NAME WILL WIN a majority of the time, and is the MOST VALUABLE domain name on that page, because most people will click on that EMD domain name FIRST before any other name on that page of search results, no matter what position it places on the page (3rd, 5th, whatever).

I believe this new statement by Google regarding less weight being given to SEO for EMD’s will not diminish .com.au EMD values. In fact, from what I am experiencing, geo targeting (giving more search ranking weight to .com.au domains on Google.com.au) is already more-so effecting search rankings. Notice how you hardly see a .com come up on the first page results of an Australian Google Search anymore? Google knows where we live. It knows that Australians want .com.au(.) They’re all mostly .com.au’s – Which is making an Australian EMD (.com.au) even more valuable than it’s ever been.

Another thing I am noticing is that Australian Businesses are only now just beginning to understand what is happening in the Australian domain name marketplace. And they’re late to the game. And they’re prepared to pay to start playing. That’s what I’m finding.

Don’t worry. I consider myself late to this game. But on the flipside it has given me a unique “fresh-eyes” perspective on what’s happening in this industry.

Australian .com.au EMD’s are powerful, valuable, but really cheap at the moment, in my humble opinion, and I believe, just like house-prices in the 80’s, that things are going to go crazy in later years.

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