Exact match domain ranking comparison.

[howiex1]

Assuming all the following websites content is of the same value to google's eyes (or assume duplicate content isnt penalized and they are all the same) and they all go to the same landing page (assuming the above rules) in what order do you think these would rank in a US google search for 'shoes'.

A)www.sho.es

B)www.sho.es/shoes

C)brand.com/shoes

D)shoes.brand.com

E) (if you have the time) Repeat B),C) and D) for .net

[MoosaHemani]

Google is giving less and less value to domains that contain exact match anchor text but if all other ranking signals are constant (as you said) I believe Google will give the value to domains that contain exact match anchor text with standard extensions!

I believe the ranking order will be something like this!

-          Brand.com/shoes

-          Shoes.brand.com

-          Sho.es

-          Sho.es/shoes

The reason why .es domains are ranking below the other two is because .es is the ccTLD of Spain whereas .com is a general extension.

Hope this helps!

Note: Google is not as simple as we think so this is just an assumption as per the best of my knowledge but we can be totally wrong about how Google think about this scenario!

[Chris.Menke]

It's a trick question, right?  Only one of them would rank and the others would be at the bottom of the results because they were duplicates.  The one that would rank would probably be the one with the best links to it / highest authority

If you're asking if they were all exact copies of each other with the same back links, which URL might rank higher than the others simply by virtue of it domain name, it would be a crap shoot but Moosa may be right.