Exact Match Domain Names Carrying More Weight in Google...

I will compare some stats from SEO Book vs AaronWall.com, with SeoBook.com numbers first

Time online (months): 26 28
Number of posts: ~1,500 ~650
Yahoo! linkdomain -internal links: 151,000 1,770
Average links / page: 1,000 2.5
Bloglines subscribers: ~700 5
Mainstream news coverage: lots little
Alexa ranking: 9,350 208,964
PageRank: 6 5
Google rank for Aaron: 9 186
Google rank for Wall: 21 655
Page Title: Aaron Wall's SEO Book Terist Nuklear Pengwin (don't ask)
Traffic: 4x x (seo book gets about 4 times as much traffic on average days and upwards of 50 times)

Given the above, which site would you expect to rank better for Aaron Wall? Google search results for Aaron Wall.

Now surely covering the topic of SEO and having 1,000 inbound links per post means some (or perhaps most) of my link popularity pointing at this site is shady (or wonky, as Matt would say), but there should be little to no reason why Aaron Wall.com outranks SEO Book for the phrase "Aaron Wall" unless Google is counting the domain name in that. This site has more and better links, more user data, a more relevant page title, more relevant page copy, and even ranks in the top 10 for "Aaron" and #21 for "Wall".

A couple others have confirmed my suspicion that an exact matching domain name can rank a bit better than they otherwise would. Andy Hagans recently posted on the SEO contest, noting 6 of the top 30 results have an exact matching domain name.

Google counting exact matching domains a bit more than you would suspect gives them the ability to allow a site to rank for it's official name while still keeping it sandboxed (untrusted, or whatever term you want to call it) for other phrases until Google learns to trust it.

I don't think my-spammy-mortage-loans.com gets the same love that a mortgageloans.com (or equivalent) domain name would. And there may be some elements that interface with bid price or perceived market value that help determine how well domain.cc, domain.net, domain.com, etc. should rank for "domain" searches, and how quickly they (and their link popularity and usage data) can be trusted.

Anyone done any domain name testing recently?

Lee Odden Interview

I will probably start doing a few more interviews in the coming months. I recently interviewed Lee Odden, who is a well known blogger, SEO and public relations expert.

The Key to Internet Advancement

Seth posts about how controlling your category is important if you want to earn more traffic.

Even one of the world's leading authorities on links think the key to internet advancement is content:

For me it’s about the content. Can I help the content get known or not? I don’t care if it’s a FORTUNE 500 company or a mom and pop site. If the content is about a specific topic and well done, then it deserves to be known and linked. If the content is crap, even if it’s produced by a large corporation, then why bother? It’s not me that gets the links for the content; it’s the content itself that earns the link. I’m just a conduit.

Another Court Case Update...

The judge issued an order on my case today, thowing it out on grounds of personal jurisdiction, stating:

Defendant's blog site while interactive in the sense that it allows individuals to read and post comments on a forum, does not rise to the level of interactivity to tip the "sliding scale" in favor of personal jurisdiction [over a nonresident].

Our motion for summary judgement was moot since courts do not decide liability issues on cases they are not hearing.

The court gave the plaintiff 30 days to request leave to ammend the complaint. As I learn more so will you. Thanks to everyone who has helped me out so far.

Backlink Analyzer Fixed

Some of my friends recently told me that the version of Backlink Analyzer on the site did not do the cross referencing of the anchor text profile. I linked the download page to a version that does.

If you downloaded Backlink Analyzer and you were not able to cross reference the anchor text profile give this version a try. After all the pages are spidered click the search terms button to bring up a full list of words in the anchor text, linking page title, and page copy of the page you are analyzing. You also can enter a phrase or groups of phrases and click the add keyword button to see how often those phrases occur in the anchor text.

I am hoping to have a new version out by the end of the month that will be cross platform, extensible plug-in friendly, and open source...will see how it goes.

Learning Bits and Pieces About Affiliate Marketing...

I have not done lots of affiliate marketing for others yet, but I am still learning some stuff about it. I really would love to learn PHP and go to the Affiliate Summit, but until then I will learn bits and pieces at a time.

Having affiliates can show you some of the unique ways they market. Most affiliates do not push stuff very hard, but around 1 or 2% do. Some will create review sites and then even go so far as to tell you how they are marketing them.

I also am an affiliate for a few companies. It looks like some of them are cross referencing internal information with linkage data to competing sites to push stuff at affiliates.

Where are your favorite sources for affiliate information?

Google's Matt Cutts Confirms Traffic Power Ban

Matt Cutts has confirmed that Traffic Power and some of their clients were banned from Google:

I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines

That is likely a major blow to Traffic Power's legal claims.

Can You Rank Without Relevant Anchor Text or Page Copy?

In MSN I noticed someone ranking #6 for my name even though they have no page copy or anchor text which has my name in it...although their site is co cited many times in articles next to my name...for sending me what I believe to be an absolutely bogus lawsuit.

Free Meta Search Engine Source Code

Want to run your own meta search engine? I made the source code to Myriad Search open source...so if you want it come and grab it.

Google, Yahoo! and MSN are queried via their API programs. Since Ask does not have an API those results are grabbed from Teoma.

Myriad Search makes it quick and easy to see all the top search results at the major engines and then export the results via a CSV spreadsheet. It also allows you to grab Alexa data, if you desire it.

Why Search Algorithms Must Change...

DougS posted a good post at Threadwatch about why he feels current search algorithms will be forced to change sooner rather than later.

The scalability and quality of search spam, search volume, ad prices, ad targeting, and search length have all increased while some of the top search spammers have amassed vaults of cash.

RCJordan thinks scaled sophisticated automation is comming soon, pointing out Pleo:

We are within 2 years of real, true, authentic, themed, auto-gen'd content using AI bots. (Actually, I think some are on the brink now, but didn't want to scare Matt & Tim.) While that is mind-boggling prospect, imagine what 2k, 4k, or 256k smart, funny, prolific, and auto-propagated blog-bitches could, no, will do to the serps.

KidMercury posted that he believes real content producers will have to start focusing more on relationships than just content:

I suppose those who value manual content production will need to focus on personalization, immediacy, and the creation of an identity -- stuff that is more about relationship-building as opposed to content-building.

With that in mind, being real off the web, telling stories that are easy to spread (see Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars),and who you know are really going to start mattering much more for SEOs than it once did.

The irony of the automated spam generation situation is that as search becomes more pervasive Google creates more value, and passes more of that value back to those who spam, and Google is paying people more to spam than they are paying people to stop it. That is why Google must put so much effort spinning public relations opportunities like they did when they recently banned BMW's website.

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