No exact-match domains made the first page of Google when searching for Thanksgiving

Around the holidays I always like to take a look at how exact-match domains (EMDs) do when it comes to Google rankings. This morning I did a Google search for Thanksgiving and was expecting to see Thanksgiving.com on the first page since it is a developed site:

thanksgiving-com

Going up to page four of Google, Thanksgiving.com is the only EMD that made the cut even though it ended up on page 2. Now, all this being said I’m not incredibly surprised since Wikipedia is #1 for Thanksgiving and after that are a lot of news articles from sites like NBC.com.

Still, I remember a time years ago when exact-match domains had a real presence on page one of Google, some making it above-the-fold. As we all know, being on page two of Google means that you’re probably not going to get much search traffic. In fact, only 6% of search traffic makes its way to page two (Source – Forbes) and since Thanksgiving.com is in the middle of page two (i.e. not at the top) it’s probably getting around 1% of the search traffic.

But let’s be honest. Who the heck really goes to Google and searches for Thanksgiving? I think people look for things like Thanksgiving recipes, but sadly Thanksgiving.com doesn’t show up in the first five pages of search results for this phrase so they’re not getting any search traffic there.

So if you’re thinking about buying an exact-match domain in order to rank well for a popular holiday, think again, those days are long gone.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton