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The idea of using domains with an exact match to a search query (Exact Match Domain, EMD) emerged in the mid-2000s and quickly gained popularity among SEO specialists. These domains made it easy and fast to improve website rankings in search results.
However, everything changed in 2012 when Google updated its algorithms: the importance of keywords in domain names decreased, while quality factors—such as content relevance, user value, and website authority—became the priority.
In 2023, Google shifted its focus again, placing greater value on niche websites and domains containing brand names, especially for queries related to the brand itself. This change allowed such sites to outrank even major players in search results. The goal was to give smaller businesses a fair chance to compete with industry giants like Amazon in the U.S., which have significantly larger resources. As a result, a brand’s website could surpass its brand page on a large marketplace.
This trend opened up new opportunities for SEO strategies and led Promodo specialists to consider whether EMDs could once again become an effective promotion tool.
To determine whether Google is once again prioritizing Exact Match Domains (EMDs), we decided to conduct a large-scale experiment.
For this, we chose the sports goods niche—it had enough competition to ensure the test's validity while not requiring excessive resources for promotion.
“We avoided highly competitive queries, as they would have made promotion more challenging and required significant investments. However, zero competition wasn’t ideal either—under such conditions, it would be difficult to prove that the EMD was the key factor in getting the site to the top.
Thus, a moderately competitive niche turned out to be the optimal choice, ensuring that external factors, such as the "sandbox" effect, wouldn’t distort the results”.
Ihor Hladkyi, SEO Team Lead at Promodo
📝 Google’s sandbox effect refers to a situation where a new website doesn’t immediately rank high in search results, even if it meets all SEO requirements.
Although Google has never officially confirmed the existence of such an algorithm, many experts have observed that new websites often remain "in the shadows" for weeks or even months. This phenomenon is believed to occur because the search engine "monitors" new sites, assessing their quality, relevance, and trustworthiness before allowing them to climb the rankings.
To eliminate the influence of domain history on the results, we decided not to use dropped domains. Instead, we registered completely new domains that contained only the search query. As a result, we tested the theory on a freshly created website.
📝 Dropped domains are domains that were previously used but later abandoned or not renewed by their owners, making them available for registration again. In other words, they are resold", abandoned, or expired domains with their own usage history.
We selected queries that could avoid a prolonged "sandbox" effect. In the SEO community, this term is used to describe the situation where new websites don't immediately achieve high rankings due to specific Google algorithms. Even with perfect SEO optimization, this effect can last for several weeks or even months.
First of all, we selected two popular search queries and registered the corresponding domains in the available domain system.
Secondly, Promodo’s SEO team purchased hosting with WordPress support and linked the domains to the hosting. Further, we installed WordPress and conducted a basic setup (site theme, necessary plugins).
Promodo’s experts conducted keyword research, created the site structure, and composed task instructions for the articles.
As a result, we published 8 articles on each site with an average article length of 4,000 characters with spaces.
Further, we launched the basic SEO optimization elements, including meta tags for each page.
As part of the link-building strategy, we’ve used anchor and non-anchor internal links on the website. We also provided links to the websites from other sites and forums.
However, sometimes businesses need to change their domains. Promodo has expertise in changing the domain without losing traffic.
Just two weeks after launching one of the test websites, we observed movement into the TOP-50 on Google. The progress remained steady and continued to grow. In contrast, the second website did not show significant results—only a few queries appeared in the TOP-50, and progress stopped there.
The hypothesis was confirmed, but it’s not that simple.
The experiment showed that using a keyword in the domain can help improve rankings even with minimal SEO effort, but further SEO growth depends on the niche and the level of competition.
In less favorable conditions, more significant investments in content and external optimization are necessary, including:
Each semantic core contained 87 queries. As a result, nearly 80% of the queries from the first site reached the TOP-50, which is a powerful outcome.
No growth in rankings was observed on the second domain. This result confirmed the dependency of EMD effectiveness on niche selection, competition, and the conditions under which the strategy is implemented.
Exact Match Domain can work even with a minimal budget if the niche is properly chosen and basic SEO principles are applied. However, for stable results, it is important to consider all factors, from content quality to the level of competition.
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