Hard Facts about the Google EMD Update from Sept 28 [Update 2]
22 Comments
Loading ...True Story: What Matt Cutts probably forgot to tell you in his minor weather report
Don’t get stuck out in the SEO storm – find out what really happened
Google’s latest update triggered a lot of rage and anger in the SEO community. Did Google really set out to destroy small companies, SEO’s and informative EMD websites?
MinorWeatherReport.com investigates what really happened by looking at cold hard facts rather than conspiracy theories and famously understated information from Google.
We analyzed 69 EMD websites: 34 winners vs. 35 losers and found the really interesting patterns you should know about.
Download our 13 page report for FREE and get the following
- all 69 sites we analyzed with all the SEO metrics
- exact comparision of Winners vs. Loser
- analysis of the current situation on Google EMD update
- detailed explanation for every key finding for evey metric
- and of course charts and data tables, so you can double-check our results (with free access to Link Research Tools, too!)
You will get answers to questions like these
- What’s the difference between a website that just lost -99% or gaining +221% in traffic overnight – still being an Exact Match Domain (EMD)?
- Is the new EMD update really just a disguised Penguin 2 update?
- Did Google simply put more weight on domain trust than keywords?
- Is this the end of EMDs?
- What do I need to belong to the Winners in this and future updates?
**** Updated Oct 09****
Keyword analysis added.
**** Updated Oct 22****
Brand EMDs removed and deeper domain based analysis added.
Are YOU among the winners or the losers?
You can download the full 13 page report with all the details here for a tweet
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Take it further. Did your EMD drop in rankings, too? Let us know!
We need your help to learn more about this update.
What do you think?
Latest posts by Christoph C. Cemper
- Learn from a Deep Dive into a Penguin 2.0 Victim’s Spam Penalty – May 24, 2013
- Penguin 2.0 Is Live – Learn How to Get Back Your Rankings – May 23, 2013
- New LRT Starter Plan – May 21, 2013
22 Comments
I work with two publicly listed companies in Sweden and I use your tool in my work for them. Link Research Tools is one of the most important tools in my SEO work for clients since it gives me a lot of control of the links and the competitors. I can also focus my linking job to the most important links.
Christian Rudolf, disruptive.nu
Cempers ‘Link Research Tools’ are the appropriate SEO-weapon to dominate the digital online marketing battle field: Precise data, smart queries and rich details help you to analyze your competition, choose the seo strategy that fits your needs and boost your linkbuilding performance.
Karl Kratz
Some personal experience from Google’s Latest Algo Update: Targeting Exact Match Domains – Historic Background / HOW + WHAT.. http://bit.ly/ODstJK #seo #domains #emd
@
Your’re correct! and well said point about Google’s activities.
“What are low quality keyword domains anyways?
Google keeps talking about quality content, but exactly how can Google determine quality? The truth is that Google has no real way (a part from a spell checker) to check the quality of your content, apart from external signals such as backlinks and social signals. So why does Google continue misinforming us? Probably because this is one of the only factors they can’t judge well so this is the only way they can think of to encourage people to write quality content.”
If you read the conclusion in our report, you’ll see what we found to be the “Quality Signal” that Google uses, and some EMDs even won.
In addition to a new “EMD” update, Google has now also confirmed a fresh Panda Update has rolled out, which will have caused some “dancing” of its results.
supports the wide spread belief that a DMOZ entry is not the ‘holy grail’ trust signal it used to be.
So, it basically boils down to the fact that you need to intensively make use of social triggers (Twitter, Facebook, etc). I mean apart from really useful content, your site should also have a strong social aspect.
What analysis of the content hosted on the sample sites did you perform? I couldn’t see anything in your report related to content, so it’s difficult to see how you can draw any strong conclusions at all as to what signals Google uses. At best your charts show some very light correlations, and being honest I’ve no idea why you even looked at sharing signals here – every man and his dog knows they’re far too noisy to be used.
Hi Richard,
we didn’t analyze the content hosted.
The point is, simply because Google talks about “low quality EMDs” doesn’t mean they look at content itself either. The point we show is that it’s about the Power*Trust of their backlink profiles already.
Social signals were analyzed because that’s always coming up, and I don’t agree that every man and his dog knows they’re far too noisy to be used. We showed that they are not relevant here, which is another good finding IMHO. Not looking at those would have just giving the social signal fans fuel for speculation.
Best, Christoph
Richard,
we just added another chapter on the link anchor text (breakdown by keyword) to the PDF including credits for your feedback.
We can confirm that the losers seems to also have overdone it with “Brandkeyword” = Exact Match Keyword on those,
in addition to the weak links they had.
Best Christoph
You can also checkout the EMD research data from HP Group carried out over 5000 keywords – http://www.highposition.com/blog/googles-emd-update-the-numbers/. The data shows that the average EMD ranking went from #13.4 down to #26.6 and the average PMD ranking went from #39.7 down to #47.7. The post is well worth a read.
Hi Chris, thanks for this. Can you mail me the 5000 domains you used, so we can run then thru our ways of analysis to maybe augment your findings?
Best, Christoph
Sorry Christoph but at present I can’t divulge that data
it’s a shame because I’d love to see your findings as well.
Chris,
if that would help we can sign an NDA and confirm that we’ll present aggregate data, i.e. no details on domains etc, like
we also didn’t disclose the details of the confidential reports here http://cemper.co/unnatural
Christoph
Hey Christoph,
just gave your report a read and must say that it is quite interesting.
One thing astounded me: the part about anchor texts. Cause when you look at the graph it shows that it is the other way around (if I read it right…). The losers had more brand keywords and less money keywords than the winners.
That is the exact opposite from what happened with the penguin update!
In the report you tell it the same way but in the conclusion you turn it around.
Have a second look at this…
Cheers
Hendrik
PS: Any way to get notified of follow up comments?
Just did a tweet, got directed to the software for download, but dont have a report…whats the next step?
Hello Don! Please check your mails. You have received a pm regarding our case study. Regards.
That’s a interesting report; it shows that the social media signals, which can be gamed easily, aren’t an important ranking factor. My own findings show that getting backlinks from highly trusted websites is the way to go from now on. Google has preached about it indirectly for years, but it looks like it’s finally happening.
Hi i just took a look at your report. It looks like the loser EMD domains are back up at the top of Google. Am i correct ? If so, are you for hire?
Hey guys,
I paid with a tweet and wound up at a pdf toolbar site.
http://wiseconvert.com/d/
And no, I didn’t receive a pm or an email. What happened to the report?
Looks like you clicked the ad instead of tweeting
on the paywithatweet page (its the button on left, not green right)
Ah, so it was my mistake, huh. When I said I paid with a tweet, I meant I paid with a tweet:
https://twitter.com/jimbeetle/status/261544565851426816
Thanks for the good experience.
not sure if it worked now or now, but we have nothing to do with the wiseconvert thing
I mailed you the download link