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: 

Domain Trust/Authority 

Anchor Text in External Links

On-Page Keyword Usage 

Raw PageRank / Link Juice 

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. 

1. 

   John @ Curious Cat Investing Blog

   May 17, 2009 at 12:39 pm

   Interesting but the importance of host domain seems a bit over rated to me. And importance of high value links seems under represented. I agree raw page rank is not as important as before but the combination of high value (link from related highly regarded, algorithmically) and anchor text is not captured in the graph.

   John @ Curious Cat Investing Blogs last blog post..Can unemployment claims predict the end of the American recession?
2. Brand name searches are out, along with short search terms | Digital Media

   May 21, 2009 at 6:58 am

   [...] also speaks about the increases in longer search terms. Much like my post a few days ago about how generic domain names are gaining, this recent information helps give us wind of how habits with online searches are [...]