Bing: It’s A Myth That Keyword Rich Domain Names Improve Search Rankings

Microsoft Bing’s Senior Product Manager, Duane Forrester, wrote last night at the Bing Webmaster Blog that it is only a myth that in today’s ranking algorithms that a keyword rich domain name will make enough of an impact on your rankings to give you a major boost above your competitors. Duane said that maybe “10 […]

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Microsoft Bing’s Senior Product Manager, Duane Forrester, wrote last night at the Bing Webmaster Blog that it is only a myth that in today’s ranking algorithms that a keyword rich domain name will make enough of an impact on your rankings to give you a major boost above your competitors.

Duane said that maybe “10 years ago” there was some truth to that but today – that is not the case.

The domain and keywords in that “domain send less and less” ranking signals to the overall Bing ranking algorithm. Duane said this is a good thing because the other signals can rank sites based on better merits than the words in a domain name plus “it’s better simply because those sites trying to abuse their way to the top with a keyword rich domain and irrelevant or poor content cease to rank well.”

But it doesn’t mean having keywords in a domain name is bad. Duane said it is important to do what is best for your users.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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