What is your opinion about EMD?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Benjamin van Leeuwen: Normally is tell my clients to not invest that much time into EMD anymore.
  So I explain what they do and did.
  But one of my clients went to a seminar and he was told that EMDs are very important.
  Am I cutting corners on this subject? What is your opinion about EMD?
• 
  Simon Fryer: Hi +Benjamin van Leeuwen  ;
  
  The  ;update late last year aimed to reduce the impact of EMD's, and you can really tell the difference when you compare Google results to Bing's. ;
  
  EMD's still carry a little weight in my opinion, but with hummingbird introduced and semantic search on the rise literal keyword targeting is going to become of less and less importance to Google results, and the value of EMD's will fall even further. This is something that newbies don't get, so they tell people that an EMD is the key to their success (sigh...). ;
  
  However, if Bing were to take a greater market share (they have become Siri's back end search provider) having an EMD could become more valuable until they too update their algo. ;
  
  The bottom line: an EMD isn't the valuable shortcut it Google used to be, although for now it still carries a little weight. Generally I advise start-up clients to go for partial match domains, such as www.brand-keyword.lol before migrating to www.brand.lol further down the line. ;
• 
  Mike Stetzer: Vast majority of EMDs that I come across are bad websites. ;
  
  I agree with +Simon Fryer  ;when he says that "literal keyword targeting is going to become of less and less importance to Google results, and the value of EMD's will fall even further"
• 
  Steve Racicot: What is an EMD?
• 
  Dave Elliott: emd = exact match domain. Basically, its having a website named after the keyword you are trying to rank for. Normally things like. Car-rental-new-york.com or gardeners-london.com Stuff like that.
• 
  Steve Racicot: Thanks Dave.  ;It must be the monday morning brain freeze..  ; ;
  
  I agree the domain is not that important. ;
• 
  Michael Chapman: EMD's don't do very much at all these days.
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  Rick Bucich: Is it brandable? i.e. when people type in the phrase they are looking for that particular site. If yes, great. If no, I'd argue it is a waste of time.
• 
  Chase Billow: Hard to argue with a seminar lol
• 
  SKI USA INC: EMD still has a lot of value provided it's done correctly. However as +Rick Bucich pointed out, the client needs to think if it is brandable with that name.
  
  How would you like your business to be identified? All of these questions should be the deciding factors when it comes to opting for an EMD or not.
• 
  Sabeeh ul Hassan: Large number of businesses who were having keyword based domain got penalized in the penguin updates. You know why??? Because Google assumes your domain as a generic keyword and when Google detects/finds its saturation into your content, metas and link building campaign then you have to face a penalty which is called EMD. Google recommends few techniques for such businesses to avoid this kind of loss. Do contact me for further discussion on it. ;