Does Having Your Keyword In Your Domain Rank Higher?
by Jon Ricerca
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com
This
is one of the controversial questions in many of the SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) forums, yet it is very easy to answer for
any particular search engine. This article conclusively answers
that question for the leading search engine.
The methodology is really quite simple for this question.
I gathered the results of the queries I naturally performed last month
using the leading search engine and analyzed them.
It was a simple matter of counting the number of listings
that had the keyword in the domain vs. those that didn't. This data
was tabulated against the ranking for the first 8 search engine listings.
Here
is the graph
The
X-axis shows the ranking from 1 through 8 on the leading search
engine. The Y-axis shows the number of domains that contained
the keyword. There is an obvious correlation, which shows that
domains containing the keyword are more likely to be ranked in
the higher positions than domains that do not contain the keyword.
Notes:
1.
For the purposes of this test, only the domain portion of the
URL was studied. So, the following would have been the results
for the following URLs for the keyword "widgets":
http://www.widgets.com/widgets
(yes - domain contained the keyword "widgets")
http://www.abcwidgets.com/abcd
(yes - domain contained the keyword widgets)
http://widgets.abc.com/
(yes ~ domain contained the keyword widgets)
http://www.abc.com/widgets/
(no ~ although the URL contained the keyword widgets, the domain
did not!)
Basically,
the domain was considered to be any portion of the URL after the
http://, but before the first slash which would start the rest
of the URL.
2.
Over 1,000 queries were examined for this test.
3.
There was no exercise to attempt to isolate different keywords.
I merely took a random sampling of the queries I performed during
the month.
Conclusion:
When
looking at the first 8 positions, the leading search engine ranks
domains containing the keyword (search phrase) higher than domains
that do not contain the keyword.
This
is merely a correlation study, so it cannot be determined from
this study whether the leading search engine purposefully entertains
this factor or not. The actual factors used may be far distant
from the factor we studied, but the end result is that this search
engine does, in fact, rank domains containing the keyword higher.
Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and
authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com.
For access to the other SERF reports, please visit: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com
