The EMD Update — for “Exact Match Domain” — is a filter Google launched in September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names. When a fresh EMD Update happens, sites that have improved their content may regain good rankings. New sites with poor content — or those previously missed by EMD — may get caught. In addition, “false positives” may get released. Our latest news about the EMD Update is below.

Verisign Blames Google For Drop In Domain Registration & Renewal Rates

Oct 26, 2012 at 3:09pm ET by Matt McGee

The number of new domains being registered, and existing domains being renewed, is slowing down and Verisign -- the company that operates the .com and .net domain registries -- says Google is a main reason why. On the company's Q3 earnings call yesterday, Verisign shared the following data related to domain registrations and renewals: total .com and .net domain registrations grew only one percent in Q3, below the company's previous guidance to investors registrations of .net domains were down one percent from a year ago the domain renewal rate was 72.3 percent in Q3, down from 72.9 p [...]

Deconstructing The Google EMD Update

Oct 25, 2012 at 2:23pm ET by Christoph C. Cemper

Well, it's official - no more free lunch for EMD, now that the Google EMD Update has launched. It worked well, for a long time. A whole industry of exact match domain tools and brokers came up. Huge premium prices for good names just went through the roof when it was a real “money keyword.” For quite a while, it was possible to rank in the TOP3 with literally no backlinks, compared to non EMDs, often after only a few days in literally every niche you can dream of. Exact Match Domains (AKA Keyword Domains) are, in general, domain names that exactly match the keyword a website wants to [...]

How The EMD Update Impacts Multinational Businesses

Oct 9, 2012 at 12:59pm ET by Chris Liversidge

Dialling back the importance of exact match domains, despite only effecting 0.6% US English search terms, will still have a strong impact in the Retail, Travel, Gambling & Finance verticals.

The EMD Update: Like Panda & Penguin, Expect Further Refreshes To Come

Oct 5, 2012 at 12:27pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Last week, Google announced the EMD Update, a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don't rise high in Google's search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. Similar to other filters like Panda, Google says EMD will be updated on a periodic basis. Those hit by it may escape the next EMD update, while others not hit this time could get caught up in the future. How Periodic Updates Work: The Panda Example Google has several filters that it updates periodically, that is from time-to-time. The Panda Update is the best example of this periodic na [...]

The EMD Update: Google Issues “Weather Report” Of Crack Down On Low Quality Exact Match Domains

Sep 28, 2012 at 5:05pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The head of Google web spam fighting team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google will be rolling out a "small" algorithm change that will "reduce low-quality 'exact-match' domains" from showing up so highly in the search results. Cutts said this will impact 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. He added it is "unrelated to Panda/Penguin. Panda is a Google algorithm filter aimed at fighting low quality content; Penguin is one aimed at fighting web spam. This should come as no surprise, as Cutts said a couple years ago that Google will be looking at why exact domain m [...]

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