My 1 Sentence websites ranked #2 in Google

This is why I think domain names have enormous weight.

About a year ago, before I got into SEO... (I got heavily into SEO about a week ago, my website should be completed in about 1-2 months from now) ................ I bought 2 domain names that were almost identical to 2 new condo developments in Boston.

For and example, 2 new-construction condo buildings called "The Bristol" & "The Solarium" were being built....

Their websites were:

TheBristol.com & TheSolarium.com

I thought, let me buy TheBristolCondos.com & TheSolariumCondos.com ---- and they were on godaddy, and I bought them both for $10 a piece.


I then made a free "Godaddy Website Tonight" webpage..... that basically said "Thanks for visiting the Solarium Condos .com -- this website is coming soon!" .... and then did the same for The Bristol.

My 2 websites were #2 after the actual condo developers websites............. above about 30 pages such as Boston.com/TheSolarium , etc.


Im thinking... geez I cant wait to develop these sites and sell a bunch of these condos...... then I realized, afterdoing more research --- that developing these sites could possibly be cyberquatting......... so once more educated on the subject, I deleted them --- deleted the domain, everything.


The point im trying to make here.... is I ranked #2... with no links, and only 2 sentences.... but the domain name was basically a direct hit.


What do you guys think of this??? I know there's controversy about domain names ----- but this appears to be strong proof of the weight of domain names.

Thanks for the report.

Domain names matter, but only domain names for a competitive keyword can't get you traffic. You need links.

A word like The Bristol Condos shows 123,000 results in Google, that's why the domains has been enough to rank, with no links. Undoubtedly the domain is important, but it won't do the job by itself if you were targeting something tough.

Interesting info, thank you.

The most interesting thing for me is that the prominence of KW domain names in serps seems to be a reasonably recent phenomenon.
I know that KW domains did reasonably well in Google in the past but several exhaustive tests had proven the fact that Google wasn't parsing domain names... KW's in the urls were bolded in search results but it was easily proven that any nonsense string which matched a query was also bolded).
So it seemed reasonable to assume that the success was attributable to the fact that unsolicited backlinks most often used the domain name as anchor text.
But - since last April/May KW domains seem to have become very dominant... (and as the OP has proved/testified this doesn't seem to have anything to do with BL's) which seems like a strange direction for Google to move in given the obvious "unfairness" of such a system and that fact that it will only encourage cyber-squatting!

I can't help thinking (and hoping) that the phenomenon is most likely an unintended consequence of algo changes which G have instigated / are instigating and that it will be short-lived.

Meanwhile - If I were you - I'd put the pages back, develop the sites and sell the condos

While I applaud your observations you have made some critically bad assumptions.

The ability to "RANK" is inherently tided to the amount of websites targeting webpages to the phrase you are rank for.

Show 10 domains actually targeting where you beat them all????

You observed top ranks for your domain names but how many other websites are actually attempting to beat you, compete with you on those phrases?

I have a domain frequent asked (dot) info and it ranks #1 or #2 for frequently asked [back & forth with the IRS domain] with 228,000,000 other reported pages that content those words...

That said: no one targets frequently asked so it's understandable that my domain that has the phrase in it ranks well for that term.

Now look for the domain under frequently asked questions - no where to be found... but why?

The domain name is so powerful so where are my ranks?

Against all the major government sites that all have very robust frequently asked questions section - my domain name even with all their targeted and 'on-topic' "Frequently Asked" link anchors... can't compete.

The main point I make here... in the scheme of things "THE DOMAIN" while being one of the more useful on-site optimization values - isn't a major factor if others "are also targeting that phrase"...

Obviously, if you're the only target the phrase and it's in your domain -- you're going to rank well... but it doesn't mean that you will sit #1 or even in the top 1000 if a thousand other non-keyword-domains want to rank for that phrase.