Google have just announced an update to their algorithm called exact match domain (EMD). What EMD actually means is websites that have a domain name that will contain generic search terms eg. www.teethwhitening.com where teeth + whitening is a generic search term are affected.
The impact for website owners is that websites that have “low quality content” will have their search engine ranking affected adversely.
Not to anyone’s surprise SEOs flooded social media channels with both complaints and praise for Google’s latest big move. Many posters complained that Google is unfairly punishing them for providing exactly what customers want; domain names that are easily searchable.
On the flip side of the debate, Google supporters are saying that EMD’s are black hat and should have been targeted long ago.
Black hat techniques are generally techniques that fall out the scope of good search engine optimisation skills and deliberately trick search engines into ranking the site better.