Some of you might have noticed a severe drop in traffic over the weekend to one or more of your websites. You are not alone. Google as they have been so eager to do lately has decided to implement yet another major update to their algorithm.
This one seems to have targeted exact match domains. In other words if you own a website where the domain is the exact match of a phrase that gets searched often in Google.
For example, if you own the website motorcycleinsurance.com that would be an exact match for the phrase motorcycle insurance and up until last weekend you would have an immediate advantage in the search results for that phrase. It became much easier for you to rank on page one of Google
It looks like what they have done is really penalized exact match domain websites that don’t have a ton of content or links. In other words, the automatic bonus you got from just being an exact match domain is now gone.
I still think there is an advantage to having an exact match domain and you will rank highly and quickly if you do the rest of your SEO the right way.
So what is the real net effect of this update? If you do SEO the right way regardless of what your domain name is, you will have success. Sounds ground breaking right?