Posted on May 16, 2009 - by Nate

Google’s Morphing Ranking Algorithm + Power of Generic Domain Names

I picked up a great post from randfish over at the SEOmoz blog a couple of weeks ago along with a report by Marketing Charts that coincide nicely. The SEOmoz post talks about how the Google ranking algorithm has changed, while the Marketing Charts post gives some great information on the benefit of generic domain names. Both posts were great reads and coincided with some of the work I’m currently doing at DigitalSignage.com. 

The SEOmoz post gave the following as the largest contributing factors to Google’s ranking: 

The Marketing Charts report gives some of the reasons for generic domain name success: 

Memorable Domains attributes the strong performance of generic domain names to several factors:

• Because a generic domain name describes a product or service using the words people automatically associate with the topic, it encourages them to click more.
• The presence of search terms in the domain name leads to higher organic rankings or a
• better ad quality score in pay-per-click ad ranking algorithms.
• Search engines commonly automatically bold any word in the domain name that matches the search term, drawing attention to the listing.
• There is a potential positive impact of the domain name on ad quality score.

“generic name is an established brand or website with a strong awareness and trust factor for the product or service search terms in question. Even in such cases, a generic domain name has potential value in targeting very specific product or service search terms with an appropriate keyword-rich domain. The findings suggest that established brands should consider a generic name for minisites associated with a particular product, service or ad campaign.”

I just thought all these facts were interesting and some might benefit from me sharing them here.