The importance of "exacts".

[eatburgers]

I see lots of importance being placed on how many exact searches a word or keyword gets as to their value.

However, I'm looking at a few ccTLD domains that are generic, one words, but their local exacts are not great, (e.g. 2,000). How important is this?

As an example, I doubt many people simply type in "online" into google (this is just an example to emphasise my point), it has 27,000 local exacts, but I'm sure the value of online.co.uk would be quite high.

So how important is exact searches if its just a one-word generic domain?

 

[nielsencl]

You wouldn't think many people would type in a search for "online", but if you can believe the data it seems that they do. Perhaps they hit enter too quickly...?

Exacts are a very important thing to consider because they give you a clear idea of the real traffic potential for the domain. This is more important for situations like parking, since you don't have much to work with for SEO and building content. With development, you can optimize and add content to go beyond the basic potential of the domain.

I would not ignore broad or phrase matches either, since it give you an idea of the potential for the category. And I have started seeing people talk more about the local searches, but I don't know why. All of my domains and sites get traffic on a global basis.

 

[eatburgers]

I've got another question regarding this. I've found a common one-word domain in a different language and a ccTLD which is associated with that language. The word is only four letters, and it has over 2 million "broad" LOCAL searches (local to that country, obviously), however it only has about 2000 "exact" local searches.

I'm just wondering whether to have a try with this one or not, the exacts are low but its a generic one-word and its LLLL. Any opinions?

Thanks

 

[nielsencl]

The search numbers sound great to me. The fact that the ccTLD and language match is also good. The two things that would make a difference for me is what the bids are for that keyword, and if you can optimize the domain for that language. That from a parking standpoint.

From a sales standpoint it would depend on what the word is. The search numbers indicate it's something popular, but that has many variations, which is where the bulk of the searches come from. But unlike words like "cats" or "shoes" which have high exact numbers, yours maybe something like "cheap" or "brown". These are words that are used a lot, but are used with others and don't get as many exact searches (I think, I have not checked).

So how important is exact searches if its just a one-word generic domain?

How important this is will depend on what you are going to do with the domain and who the potential buyer is. I often offer to send traffic stats when when I get contacted about a domain, but most of the time they don't care. If they are endusers they may not care about traffic even though they should. They just want the name for itself.