Search engines want to eliminate domain names?

[-REECE-]

Interesting article here: » Search Engines want to Eliminate Domain Names - John Andrews - johnon.com that talks about all the effort search engines (Google) take to encourage visitors to stay on their sites rather than visit domains.

 

[owntype]

In Japan, yes.

 

[Sam]

no matters, SEO gives HUGE importance to the exact keyphrase in the domain name, so with proper minimal seo, it will get top page.

 

[cityforums.com]

Interesting article here: » Search Engines want to Eliminate Domain Names - John Andrews - johnon.com that talks about all the effort search engines (Google) take to encourage visitors to stay on their sites rather than visit domains.

Good find Reece ... they will try but not sure it can be done successfully.

 

[-REECE-]

I think that'll have to change when ICANN starts flooding the market with new extensions or SEOs are going to abuse this big time.

no matters, SEO gives HUGE importance to the exact keyphrase in the domain name, so with proper minimal seo, it will get top page.

Good find Reece ... they will try but not sure it can be done successfully.

yeah - feel the same way about it. It doesn't make sense for them to give the traffic away for free -- what's in it for them? I wonder if we'll see them start to integrate sponsored results into organic search results in the future. I know a few search engines are already doing that.

 

[Jaco]

My greatest fear is that keyword domains are rendered SEO irrelevant sometime in the future, or that there is some sort of epic technological leap that renders them useless all together (the latter scenario seeming fairly unlikely, in my lifetime anyway)

---------- Post added at 04:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:37 PM ----------

I think that'll have to change when ICANN starts flooding the market with new extensions or SEOs are going to abuse this big time.

The engines would have the ability to weight the TLD's if they wished. There are also ways they could develop an algo that correlated the relevancy of boutique TLD with the domain keywords. That way, manhattan.nyc could get a bump over manhattan.chicago. Of course, whether they do or not is up to speculation. If they decide to allow boating.omaha rank equally with boating.com, well, unproductive "buy and hold" domaining might take a bit of a hit (save for the lucky few who own swaths of the best generics that generate type ins) It seems that ICANN wants to decouple the visceral association of .com with "all things internet". Good for some, bad for others, great for ICANN since it means $$$ to them.

 

[nameboi]

So many companies tried over the years. Aol had their keywords, and those used to be a big deal. In the 90s large companies used to spend all their online marketing budget on renting those AOL keywords like flowers instead of developing their own sites. Then there was a big effort by Real Names if I remember correctly to just rent words like flowers as a keyword that could be used without TLD. I think Microsoft was involved with Real Names. There was a lot of hype for a few years, then the whole thing slowly died.

At this point I am a lot more confident that .com will be the default extension in the US for the next 20 years than I was 10 years ago. There used to be a lot of excitement when new TLDs that could make sense were introduced - like .travel and .info for example. More recent TLDs like .asia or .me are now being greeted as borderline scam attempts from day one by many participants. People became really jaded about .com alternatives, and for a good reason.

 

[InternetMoney]

First the search gives everyones web site an equal chance to come up, then they put ads on the side, then they put paid ads on top, then its local ads with directions to their business (paid for, of course), then the search engines offers its own shopping, (by passing your shopping site) then its web master tools, their e-mail, their forums, their news, their portal, their their their stuff.

Web site owners should support a search engine that everyone has an equal chance to be found. Wasn't that what a search engine is for?

 

[cityforums.com]

I think that'll have to change when ICANN starts flooding the market with new extensions or SEOs are going to abuse this big time.





yeah - feel the same way about it. It doesn't make sense for them to give the traffic away for free -- what's in it for them? I wonder if we'll see them start to integrate sponsored results into organic search results in the future. I know a few search engines are already doing that.

I'm surprised that Google and Yahoo and MS haven't started charging for ALL 1st page listings yet.

This is always a possibility in the future ... who will stop them ?

 

[dmi]

no matters, SEO gives HUGE importance to the exact keyphrase in the domain name, so with proper minimal seo, it will get top page.

I disagree.

 

[ecalc]

I'm surprised that Google and Yahoo and MS haven't started charging for ALL 1st page listings yet.

This is always a possibility in the future ... who will stop them ?

The search engine that returns 100% paid listings on page 1 would degrade the user experience and risk losing users to competitors who offer a better experience.

 

[-REECE-]

I guess it would depend on the keyword. Many of the high value ones don't return very good results as it is because of black hat SEOs hijacking urls, injecting hidden links, or otherwise gaming Google such as with unrelated widgets, footer links in blog themes, etc. While the person willing to pay the most isn't necessarily the best, they must certainly be up there because if conversions aren't there, it's not a viable long term strategy.

The search engine that returns 100% paid listings on page 1 would degrade the user experience and risk losing users to competitors who offer a better experience.

 

[matt_bodis]

The search engine that returns 100% paid listings on page 1 would degrade the user experience and risk losing users to competitors who offer a better experience.

Yes, agreed.

But then on the other hand - you have Dogpile.com which uses nearly 100% ads and was rated #1 in User Experience for 2 straight years in a row.

Most good advertisers, have good created sites, that drive good conversions. So that's probably why their ads mean good user experience.

 

[copper]

I wonder if we'll see them start to integrate sponsored results into organic search results in the future. I know a few search engines are already doing that.

Humm...
Didn't Go.com tried that and failed back in early days of the Internet
Or, was it some other site...

 

[cityforums.com]

Yes, agreed.

But then on the other hand - you have Dogpile.com which uses nearly 100% ads and was rated #1 in User Experience for 2 straight years in a row.

Most good advertisers, have good created sites, that drive good conversions. So that's probably why their ads mean good user experience.

I remember when cable tv first came out many moons ago it was promoted as commercial free ...

incrementally over the years the commercials kept increasing incessently ... same with the movie theatres

same with DVDs ... etc etc ... they wil do it gradually ... like it was said it makes no sense to give anyone free

traffic. The user will get used to it just like they have in the examples given.