Do broken-in-half dictionary word domains valuable in terms of search engine ranking?

Artashes

Artashes

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Staff member
Something that I've been curious about for a long time.

Do domains that make up a whole dictionary word, or a phrase, but broken into 2 or more parts (using a dot or a period prior to domain's suffix), valuable at all, in terms of search engine ranking? I don't even know what to call these kind of names, but I'll give a few totally made up examples:

medi.um
constructi.on
financ.ing
ita.ly
econo.my
sho.es (this one actually sold for $11,000)

I am sure there are plenty of real other examples out there. I remember seeing companies/websites using either geographical or new domain TLDs to make up a full word (often a dictionary word) name, I just can't remember any right now and because I cannot define what these kind of domain formations are called, I couldn't find any examples by search.

So how do search engines treat them?
 
They're great for marketing campaings, but there's no inherent SEO value in them.

It would be much better to have: medium.um or construction.on

Whole keywords with ridiculous domain extensions :)

Google has stated many times that EMD (Exact Match Domains), don't factor into their rankings. Now they're talking more about "where-to-buy-cheap-meds.com" but there's always more to their practice than the example they give.

Google also states, and we've proven several times, the domain extension doesn't matter, it's still about the marketing of the domain itself. There are some extensions that Google flat out stated they will not bother to index, but barring that, there's no restrictions.

I'd much rather have "medium.biz" and get a whole word match (it would BOLD in the search results pages), than a broken word.
 
Conor brings up a good point here that often gets overlooked and that's having whole words show up BOLD in SERPS. Once prospects find your site on search queries, you want them to click through and do something.
 
SenseiSteve said:
Conor brings up a good point here that often gets overlooked and that's having whole words show up BOLD in SERPS. Once prospects find your site on search queries, you want them to click through and do something.
Click to expand...

I use Google primarily, and for me words in bold appear only in the description under a title. Neither the title, nor the URL itself displays the searched term in bold type.

Aside for that, isn't it more of an aesthetic issue anyway? If the website is on point, it will have that word embedded enough times into the site to make it clear that that is what the website is about.

Just as we are talking about this, I learned today that Microsoft is shutting its social network (who knew they had one) SOCL. And its URL is "so.cl". Obviously it is a play on word social and they went for the branding effect/short URL combo, but still - just to say that companies do opt for these..
 
Dont forget Google are going through a change in how and what they index.
no matter what the domain is if it have no SSL then it wont get index priority
 
The bolding of keywords in the URL and in the Title for the SERPs is something that continually goes through testing.

The Title & Description are used less for SEO and more for a Call To Action for individuals to click on a page. If structured right, it should look/sound like a 15-second elevator pitch.

Bolds in the Title were big on Google for drawing attention, and they're still bolded on Bing. The words are still bolded at the bottom of Google searches under the "related search" section.

It *MAY* come back into regular search at some point, but it's definitely good to have your keyword in the title (again, less for SEO, more for CTA)
 
I love these amusing domain names. I have a friend Carey who used c@rey.xx where xx is the first two letters from his surname, and that is quite cool.

Having said that they do not offer any advantage other to amuse people like myself.
 
ughosting said:
I love these amusing domain names. I have a friend Carey who used c@rey.xx where xx is the first two letters from his surname, and that is quite cool.

Having said that they do not offer any advantage other to amuse people like myself.
Click to expand...
Sounds cool, but you're right - no real advantage other than entertainment.
 
Artashes said:
medi.um
constructi.on
financ.ing
ita.ly
econo.my
sho.es (this one actually sold for $11,000)
Click to expand...

I have never seen anything like this, but if i did i would consider it to be a poor attempt at grabbing my attention. In my view if a site has to resort to an unusual name such as this, then quite possibly that means their content may not be worth looking. Simply put i would not even click on a name such as this.

Just my simple and humble opinion as a consumer.
 
the is no benefit to it, its quite useless. in my opinion i would have a regular domain and something like that as a secondary domain to serve content or blog posts. for example you can do PurpleHost.com and also do purple.host which could be used to serve your images and other data like blog post or w/e else you provide as a service. all in all still useless
 
I agree with most posts here that these kinds of domain names are quite useless...perhaps merely for marketing or entertainment purposes. However, if you have an already established brand, then it might be ok.
 
It's good for branding but for google; not value at all. Google is always changing and currently there is no value in keywords in domain names.
 
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