I've found a few trends within Google in my websites and wanted to share them for your thoughts and opinons. 1. With exception to niches - Keyword domains will not rank well 2. With exception to niches - Keyword page titles will not rank well I've been at a loss recently as to why some of my sites don't appear higher up in the Serps. My sites are white-hat, content rich and have many links, yet not a sniff whilst crap sites with no links and rubbish content prosper. 50% of my sites are my-keyword.com with title being something like The UK's leading supplier of My Keyword. The content is subtely optimized for the keyword. Apart from a few underpopulated niche areas, not a sniff. 50% of my sites are nothingtodowithkeyword.com with title being "Nothing to do with my keyword", yet the content is subtely optimized for the keyword. Hey presto - top #5 rankings. My assumption from this is that Google is looking to hinder people who are activly targetting keywords, or at least competitive keywords by having them in your domain and title. Is this a fair assumption?
It may be that they have devalued keyword rich domain names but I think that keywords in the title is very important. With google at the moment I find that rankings are all about TrustRank as much as anything else.
I havent experienced any of that yet. Its just the opposite for me. But I think quite possibly it just has to do with the competitiveness of the keyword.