To what extent do Domain Names determine Search Engine Page Rank?

[Vision]

Search Engine algorithms of the Big 3 utilize domain names as one of many factors to determine Page Rank.

However, does anyone foresee a time when the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) will give the domain name much more "weight" when determining Page Rank?

For Example: An individual in the future inputs the word "NewYork" into Google and showcased 1st on the 1st Page will be NewYork.com.

A person in the future inputs "blue shoes" in Yahoo, and blueshoes.com will appear 1st.

A individual in the future inputs the word "television" on MSN.com and television.com will appear 1st.

Any thoughts?

Thank You.

Mike

 

[RenderStream1]

Interesting questions, would like to know this as well.

 

[katherine]

If you have generic names which attract a lot of type-in then presumably they may become popular and rise in the SEPR just because of type-in.
Again, that would be just one factor.

 

[007]

That's a good point sdsinc. I've seen names that have nothing to do with the search term show up first though too, so that's not the only factor.

 

[DNGeeks]

When someone searches for "new york", the obvious domain to show up as number one (if page rank were based solely on the domain name) would be new-york.com. This is simply because the user did not search for "newyork".

Search engines can't tell what the domain name is if it is all one word. That's why it must rely on content and keywords to determine how to classify the domain.

I still feel hyphenated names can get better results faster. However they're not as good for typeins. Hyphenated names are keyword rich, seperated by a character (the hyphen) that the search engines can drop easily and then know exactly what that domain is all about.

 

[David G]

...search engines can't tell what the domain name is if it is all one word. That's why it must rely on content and keywords to determine how to classify the domain.

That is not correct. The major SE's use something called parsing where multiwords are automatically parsed into individual words. When hyphens helped a lot some yrs ago it was before the time of word parsing technology which I believe Google implemented first.

IMO, the domain definately adds value, even more so thanks to the words being parsed.

 

[DNGeeks]

I've had hyphenated domains that got to #1 in google in months, out of thousands of competitors sites. No one agrees with me on the hyphen issue so I won't argue, but since I've seen it, I have to believe it.

In this case we both feel we're right. We won't know until the SE's actually tell us and they never will.

 

[David G]

I've had hyphenated domains that got to #1 in google in months, out of thousands of competitors sites. No one agrees with me on the hyphen issue so I won't argue, but since I've seen it, I have to believe it. In this case we both feel we're right. We won't know until the SE's actually tell us and they never will.

I never said hyphens were of no value. Contrarily the opposite is true as they do help. Also have a number of hyphenated ones (mostly registered before word parsing started). All I said was that Google can parse the words in non-hypenated names and due to that they are not as valuable as in te past.

 

[DNGeeks]

I misunderstood you, all is cool.

 

[petertdavis]

Recently, Google added the age of a domain as a factor in caculating search results.

 

[paulc]

I doubt they will, page ranks main ranking factor is the amount of back links a site has. The anchor text of those links then tells the serps what keywords to rank to rank that site for.

 

[petertdavis]

You can have 20x the backlinks and anchor text of your competition and it won't matter a bit if your domain is sandboxed.