Google EMD Update – What Really Happened

Google recently rolled out the Google EMD Update, here we take a look at what happened and why it happened. Google had been giving an EMQ (Exact Match Query) boost to websites that where using a EMD (Exact Match Domain) to rank them highly in the search engines.

Many SEO experts realized what Google was doing and soon they where using this to benefit themselves and their clients. When it comes to ranking websites, SEOs will use any exploit they can to succeed, so ranking high volume search terms using the right domain is exactly what they did.

It was simple, buy a EMD do very little optimization and you got page one rankings 99.9% of the time, and sometimes No.1 without any link building at all. For many SEOs this was a tactic they just could not ignore if they had any interest in making money online, and ranking websites for their clients. Now despite what you may be thinking there is nothing black hat about this method, Google just made it too easy.

To put it bluntly, you would have to be an idiot not to try and take good advantage of this method, because believe you me your competitors wouldn’t think twice about it, they would be outranking you with ease. Like anything, all good things eventually come to an end. And with the latest Google EMD update this one surely as, the search results where becoming cluttered with low quality spammy websites that Google decided to something about it.

Image via CrunchBase

Here are just a few things that the EMD update has done.

• All the websites that were ranking by EMQ were filtered in a brand new procedure.
• If the website was abusing the EMQ boost then the new procedure took the boost away.
• If a website had its EMQ boost removed it also got scrutinized further, and low quality websites received an even bigger serp penalty.
• In operational terms, Google did something like the following:
• Locate all websites using EMQ If the website met some of the new criteria, it was removed from consideration.
• Took a look at the websites quality, and remove any boost if the quality was poor.
• As a result many websites have plummeted down the rankings, how far each site goes depends on how competitive the search term and how spammy the website is.
• Any website that was ranking for EMQ also had other rankings checked and removed.