Also the downside to exact match is they might be more likely to fall victim to over optimization penalties which seems to be rearing its ugly head more often again with tons of exact matches dropping an average of 8 spots recently and a few falling way off like 50 spots. So while it has benefits it also has risks.

Back on other topic:

There are many reasons not to use a -, but from my experience SEO doesn’t seem to be one of them. I will sometime in next few months test that theory perhaps using something like craps-online.net or similar.

Anyways very solid post and thanks for making it. Nice site btw.

1. Age of the domain – A domain registered in 1997 vs. a domain registered today. The 1997 domain is given clout.

2. 2 word domains are usually better not because it is just 2 words, but rather the order of 3 words is often easier to jumble, therefore potential traffic may be lost to competition with the same words in a different order.

3. Don’t forget “type-in” traffic. Domains with GOOD keywords will get visitors from day 1. And those visitors WILL convert to customers. WHY? Because they didn’t randomly find your site by randomly clicking along a few links, but rather they typed in exactly what they were looking for. (and hopefully you’re offering whatever that is).

4. Evidently “.org” is given a bit of clout as an “authority”.

5. Can potential customers remember your site name? The “recall” factor is a major factor, and the main reason that a short domain, or a domain with strong keywords is so valuable. Two options exist – a domain that is something really very different that requires money to brand it with creative advertising to build recall, or back to the keyword thing. Keyword domains are worth their weight in gold.

All of this of course is in addition to a site that has a lot of CONTENT which is KING.

A good domain becomes more and more valuable over time as more and more people become net savvy, and more and more cell phones become internet capable.

I’ve been buying and selling domains for 10 years, and do currently have some gaming domains I may be convinced to sell.

I had a read through of this last week and out of curiosity went off hunting for an exact match domain and managed to secure bestcasinoonline.com for less than $100.

I’m fairly happy with that given the number of searches Google reports running for the phrase over the course of a month.

You do need to be flexible when hunting for domains, as the real grade one domains will all have gone. However, I’m constantly suprised at just how many good, exact-match domains can be picked up elsehwere for a reasonable price.

Not an easy one to do.

Until someone proves it in that way, or comes up with a valid looking alternative proof method, I’d offer for debate that it looks like there’s going to be at least some question on the subject.

An interesting test would be to take two exact matches, one .com and one .info or whatever, and point a link at each one and see what happens.

I’d agree with John G that there is tons of exact matches still out there especially in smaller niches, I had to check out my own domain profile to realize I own a bunch already.

An example of a small exact match might be “pokerbountytournaments.com” or “shorthandedsngs.com” and tons of other types of phrases that are still available in large numbers.

Yeah great point. I should have clarified that anything can rank for anything, it’s just a lot easier this way. I knew someone would bring up Internet-poker.co.uk, but like you said that site has so much authority anyways that the domain isn’t a big factor.