This will definitely put a dark cloud over the domainers portfolio.

I think one of my sites got hit by this one, it looks like this 1widget.tld, the site is of almost no interest to me, but it could have got hit.

.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:37 am (utc) on Sep 29, 2012]
[edit reason] anonymized [/edit]

I have a few of these, although I do not consider them low quality. I guess I'll see if google does.

If this algorithm change has already occurred, it didn't do much. What I see: exact match subdomains moving up, an EMD in my sector with thousands and thousands of foreign backlinks moved down exactly two spots, another that expired 2 months ago moved up.

Edit: I spoke too soon. One of those sites is disappearing right before my eyes, term by term.

[edited by: crobb305 at 10:49 pm (utc) on Sep 28, 2012]

Zeus...what is your money phrase? 'widget'? '1 widget'?

Wish we could get a better definition from Matt of the "low quality" in this instance. If it's the same type of "low quality" that's Pandalized so many sites that in reality are high quality, then this small update should result in a huge change in search results.

Yep, I just lost one. "cityname"Hotels.net. It wasn't even low quality. It had good backlinks and content.

<sarcasm>
On a positive note, it was replaced with www.google.com/hotelfinder. </sarcasm>

Just lost two. They were both #1 for their keywords and are now gone. Good thing they weren't counted on for income.

widget is the money name

Two of our sites just got hit hard. Both from the 2-5 range to not in the top 100.

-The first is a three word exact match with dashes(keyword-keyword-keyword.com) that was purchased by us in 2003.

It has been page one for 6-7 years and number one a decent part of that stretch of time. Bounce rate is low, page views and time on site is high. Tons of natural links, Facebook likes, tweets, pins, etc. It offers more quality content than any other site in the niche as well as free downloads for which almost everyone else charges(millions of free downloads over the years).

It makes me wonder what they mean by "Low Quality".

-The second is not a quality site but not terrible. It is a two word keyword phrase .org without dashes. I could see it not being on page one based on it's content, but there is no reason for it to be outside of the top 100. It is not that bad.

We got slammed. Site is adjectivekeywordkeyword.com. Over 300 pages of unique content. Lots of good links. What in the world is low quality to them?

Haven't seen any movement in my niche.

"Small upcoming" - when? today? tomorrow?

At least they are timing it right by doing it late Friday evening to allow the weekend for webmasters/site owners to assess the fallout.

For those who got hit, how many of the affected sites are running AdSense?

I'm not running adsense.

Both of our effected sites run Adsense.

As far as assessing the fallout, there really is not much to assess. Two sites went from years on page one and each with plenty of time at number one to completely gone from the first 50 pages of results. I can assess that pretty quickly.

[edited by: WebPixie at 1:09 am (utc) on Sep 29, 2012]

Couple of sites I manage got hit about 3 to 4 hours ago. Results are a mess in couple of the niches I follow.

I'm not referring to only the immediate obvious as in your site is gone, there are other aspects. But I can understand your reaction to my comment if you've been stable for so long and then with the flip of a switch you've been hit.

BTW, here is another tweet from Matt.

"New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin."

I assumed this was previously implemented in the initial Penguin release, as part of "over optimization" adjustments - that's when i saw a big fall. Some of the dumbing down might have been reversed for quality sites.

Matt does state " low quality" domains - so I'm actually reviewing some sites that appear to have improved. Maybe this adjustment had some positive and negative effects to apply.

As usual I'm not seeing any effect on brand sites with exact match domains. Does anyone support or reject these observations?

Is EMD considered keywordkeyword.com or also adjectivekeywordkeyword.com.

I always though emd was for a targeted keyword only.

For those who got hit, how many of the affected sites are running AdSense?

No adsense on either of ours that have been dumped. In fact, no monetization at all.

@Whitey
My sites have been stable over the years and have always weathered the critter storms but if any algo change has a potential to affect them this is going to be the one. I'll be keeping a close eye on it but so far no changes (google.ca)

There is one very poor quality competitor site in one niche that has an exact match 2 keyword domain that should disappear if this algo is working properly. It's literally about a 3 or 4 page site with just lots of bookmark links to the same page they are on. The ONLY reason they are where they are is because of the exact 2 keyword domain.

I'm seeing two sites in my field that are huge sites of unique content totally gone. One of these sites has been a player for years and has amazing links. But, these sites are not exact match. Something else seems to be going.

For our site, we are still ranking for some terms, just slightly lower. For other terms, the targeted page is gone, with other pages from the site totally unrelated ranking. This does not make sense. Like I said...something else seems to be going on. Hopefully this is some shifting that will settle back. Thoughts?

@textex
Our 15 year old site got hit recently by something too it seems, or this is the worst google dance in history. I hope it settles... and quickly... we're ecommerce.

Traffic is up a bit, but conversions WAY down.

Yep it's working as intended ,3 of my competitors with bluewidget.com and blue-widget.com and bluewidget.net are gone from top #2 , #3, #6 respectively to nowhere in top 50.


P.S. Edit: Lately after every update play.google keeps getting dropped from 20 to 30 spots from #3 for one of the keywords I am targeting and later get re-possitioned to the same spot. Sounds weird enough ?

Donna in your opinion did they deserve to get demoted, were they poor quality?

I have lost half of my traffic on two sites that are NOT exact match domains, starting at around 7pm Eastern time today.

I have one exact match domain that has lost most of its traffic (in a totally non-lucrative niche).

@SevenCubed, they do big time. Dupes , crap links, massive amounts of ads and thin pages. They have been there for the longest I remember too. This is the 1st positive tweak(not comparing to me gaining ranks, just in general) for those selected serps in the spawn of at least 2 years.

Now if they can really fix the domain crowding and the crap news/info articles sites populating wrong verticals it would be almost shinnnyyyy.