Do Domain Names Matter?

IMO this is counting for less and less. The reason - lots of great sites - some of the best - have no keyword in the domain name.

However, I do think that domain name keywords have greater influence in the MSN and Yahoo serps than in google... just my opioion.

In my honest opinion, I think keywords in domain names are not as important as people may think. The reason why people think it is very important is when another site links to you, most of the time is uses anchor text in the form of "yoursite.com". And for that reason I think it doesn't hurt to have your most important keyword or keyphrase in the domain name.

I think you would get the same effect with a domain name that doesn't have any keywords at all in it if you had every site linking to you with your most important keywords in the anchor text. But why not try to get a domain name with your most important keywords in it anyway. Would save you time telling websites linking to you to use the keywords your wanting in the anchor text.

keyword domain names are at best of value to your link text.
...but as far as the url is concerned...they are of little value.
as far as 'branding' is concerned...an innovative and unique domain name is far better than a multi-hyphenated-domain-name.com type.

Hi;
You pointed out a really important fact. I have couple of web sites and also domains which do not even have a site.
I'm not really sure if domain names are effective on SEs... I'll give some examples in Turkish. I have a domain called bilisimfuari.com .. which meand IT Fair ... which is a a proper keyword in turkish... this site is not even listed in SE. ok maybe I didn't work on this site's SEO that much. but in another hand I have asktesti.com which means "love test" in turkish... I just opened the web site... Gave a backlink from one of my PR4 site and on the second day of the openning the site is on the first page of google.. Not sure but around 5th or 6th position... I have cyprusestateagency.com but that one is also in a bad position something like 77th or something... which is also new...

After all these, I can say domain names, keywords and Search Engines are not related to anything.. I think this is a complete luck... If the domain names main keyword is a rare one then you are on a good position... What I mean is if you are dealing with love tests and especially in Turkish, then there is not enough content related to that in Google, so you are on the first page, when you deal with estate agencies and also in English, then there is hard job waiting for you ;)

I hope my examples will help you...

Thanks.

Arda K.