indomaining.com

Last monday, new DotSauce contributor, James Agate published an article on how to survive the exact match domain apocalypse. In the following days, several industry bloggers made counter arguments with attempts to salvage the remaining advantages of “category killer” or generic keyword domains.

However, SEO publications are far and wide sharing a much different story. They cite Google’s latest search ranking algorithm changes (dubbed the ”Panda” update) as the final blow to exact match domain value for SEO.

The debate came about slowly as search results pages evolved to something completely different than what was seen a few years ago.

Aaron Wall of SEO Book Chimes In

One of the leading authorities on SEO, Aaron Wall of SEO Book, has just published a detailed editorial on how Google killed category killer domains.

He has personally stopped buying domains for SEO purposes and points to numerous factors for the decline in category killer domain value, such as the following.

1. Search engines influence domain valuation
2. Authoritative brands have received a healthy boost
3. Social search provides additional boost to brands
4. Larger and more numerous ads and product listings
5. Localization features may be harmful to GEO longtails
6. Small sites don’t matter
7. Anticipated new gTLDs

These all seem to be fairly reasonable observations in my opinion.

The World’s Not Actually Ending

Please note that Aaron does not believe all domains are doomed. We are talking about exact match domains; that is, keywords or keyword phrases that represent a search string a user would type into Google, etc.

I own dozens of these myself and still feel that they have great value and potential for other reasons than SEO benefit. So, you don’t need to take this as the literal end of the world. There will still be a thriving liquid market for domains.

Aaron made the following important point when responding to one comment.

“There is plenty of buying budget for domains in the say $50 to $5,000 range, but the main point of this post was that the high-six and low-seven figure domain names are at this point often becoming malinvestments.”

What’s Your Outlook?

Do you think Aaron is right or wrong about these domains? I’ve posed the question fairly straight-forward in the hopes of getting a balanced result. Please select the answer you feel most accurately predicts the near future of category killer domains.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Thank you for responding to the poll question! Please check back soon for the results and feel free to share your thoughts on the precarious future of exact match domains in the comment area.

Aaron Wall Declares Category Killer Domains Dead: Is He Right? (POLL) DotSauce Magazine

The latest additions to the DotSauce Domain Club have dialed-up value for membership even further. Our #1 service is offering great .COM domains at low reseller pricing.

Domain investors looking to expand their portfolios and make more sales are invited to take a look at our inventory and other value added services offered exclusively to Domain Club premium members.

Today’s update has a little something for everybody.

These 9 domains are now being offered for only $19 each to Domain Club premium members.

As you can see, there are a handful of short brand names as well as popular keyword domains with promising search volume.

Standout Domains

• National Diabetes Month is November, so that domain represents an excellent opportunity to develop.
• Thousands of website owners search for HTACCESS tutorial each month.
• Baroque Guitar is a great niche product domain
• A domain with considerable age (6yrs) has also been included, Telephone Prank is a great generic phrase.

And in-case you missed the previous update, here’s a look at more recent additions.

For additional stats, the complete $19 domain inventory is available in a convenient sortable table.

Domain Investors’ Central

With membership at the DotSauce Domain Club, you can grow your portfolio and resell quality domains for nice profits. With just one domain sale your membership fee can be repaid many times over!

Our inventory is sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. Join today to claim your favorite domains.

Visit the Domain Club features and pricing page to learn about affordable membership plans and other valuable services offered to domain investors.

Exceptional New .Com Domains Available to Domain Club Members DotSauce Magazine

Domain industry pioneer Michael Mann, who co-founded BuyDomains (and later sold the company to NameMedia), plans to share some advice on how to beat your competition in a free webinar that will be presented next Thursday (June 2). We’ll tell you how you can sit in. We also have a couple of DOMAINfest Europe updates today.

Pete Cashmore, Founder of Mashable was recently interviewed by Bloomberg (Video embedded below).

Cashmore reported that Mashable now receives 50 million page-views per month, and has gained an incredible increase of 10 million in the span of 1 month. The publication is branching out to multiple news areas of interest to online readers beyond Technology news. Some of their best performing categories are Marketing and Business.

In 2011, Mashable has taken over the sale of their advertising. Simply by not giving away 50% revenue share to an ad network such as Google AdSense they have effectively doubled their revenue. Direct advertising is one of many ways to make money blogging (#7) and is likely the single biggest money maker for professional bloggers.

The State of the Blogosphere

The massive success and following of online publications such as Mashable, the largest online publication The Huffington Post, and AOL’s purchase of TechCrunch for $25 million has led the blogosphere to grow tremendously in 2011. Even smaller bloggers are getting multi-million dollar deals.

The blogosphere has truly arrived to the mainstream in 2011, largely piggy-backing off the success of Facebook, Twitter and other means of social news consumption.

Blogging is an essential and increasingly important part of online business. I highly recommend it. If you can curate and share value, you will gain customers and keep your existing ones in-touch.

I look forward to riding the wave generated by this Internet boom with DotSauce Magazine. I believe the domain industry will make a similar emergence in 2012 with the introduction of thousands of new gTLDs. It’s not so far-fetched to predict the future as the exponential growth of the internet is plain to see.

Congratulations to Mashable–thank you for leading the way.

Mashable Doubles Revenue In 2011 Switching to Direct Advertising DotSauce Magazine

The latest quarterly Verisign Industry Brief shows demand for new domain names continues to grow. 4.5 million new domains were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2011, and over 15 million have been added since the same quarter a year ago. We have more details on that plus a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2011 update.