[best web]

A clients website used to be PageRank 7/10. I had the website on my profile at webmasterworld.com. Now its 6/10. There is no reason for the drop. I think Google manually lowered the PageRank for participating in an SEO forum. I've removed the website from my profile. How long do penalties last?

[best web]

Hello?

[Anonymous]

I apologize, Benjamin, I must have overlooked your post.
I doubt that Google penalizes for being a member of an SEO forum. And if they were to penalize, I think it would be more than one rank. A fluctuation from PR7 to PR6 is not a big deal, and it could have been caused by any number of things. A simple tweak of the algo, and thousands of sites have a lower PR.
Good luck with that. 8)

[hatchet]

What you talk about with the change to the algo could be correct. My site also dropped one PR from PR6 to PR5.

[jeremy]

Hello,

I am curious as to peoples thoughts on the relevance that a domain name has on a sites position in google search results.

For example (hypothetical), if I bought the domains:
a. bizcoxyz.com
b. fashionablehairstyles.com

and put identical content on both of them, the content being a hair stylist something or other. Would domain b. be more likely to have a higher ranking in google than domain a ? or does the domain name not affect the position enough to justify the more specific domain name?

[Anonymous]

Jeremy,
Welcome to the forum. Google, and many other SE's for that matter, don't put so much weight on the domain name as they do on anchor text of links, and page titles. You could go with vxoxo.com, and it still would not affect your ranking.
However, when people link to you, would want the anchor text of "Fashionable Hair Styles", rather than the anchor text of "bizcoxyz.com", I'd go with either "fashionablehairstyles.com" or "fashionable-hair-styles.com".

[jeremy]

That sounds fair enough to me. The most plausible reason for a topical domain name then is to make it memorable for human consumption. I won't bother so much with trying to find the 'perfect' domain name.

[Anonymous]

Good luck with that. Hope you stick around! :D

[ian]

I won't bother so much with trying to find the 'perfect' domain name.
Jeremy, time spent finding a good domain name is usually time well spent in my opinion.
I believe that keywords in a URL do give you an advantage.
Google sometimes plays with their algorithm and changes the weighting it gives to keywords in the URL, but for the most part, in my personal experience, it is just one of many factors which does help.
And in a competitive field such as the internet, sometimes that little extra edge is needed to give you an advantage over the competition.

[Anonymous]

Ian,
www.vhst01.net
That used to be #1 for the search "seattle web hosting".
And it's not even a decent domain.

But I do agree with you that,
time spent finding a good domain name is usually time well spent in my opinion.

[jeremy]

On all counts that sounds quite reasonable. My primary goal at the moment is seeing if I can improve my search engine rankings, a challenge in many aspects.

A good relevant domain name looks nice in the address bar, easier to remember and possibly beneficial for rankings, but definitely I don't see the benefit in paying large sums for a particular domain, easer just to make one up for $7.