The EMD Update — for “Exact Match Domain†— is a filter Google launched in September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names.
EMD gets its name because it targets “exact match domains,†which are domains that exactly match the search terms that they hope to be found for. Google specifically said EMD was designed to go after poor quality sites that also have exact match domain names. If you do a search for “Google,†you still find plenty of Google web sites that all have “Google†in the domain name. EMD didn’t wipe them out because those sites are deemed to have quality content. EMD is more likely hitting domains like online-computer-training-schools.com; it’s a fairly generic name with lots of keywords in it but no real brand recognition. Domains like this are often purchased by someone hoping that just having all the words they want to be found for (“online computer training schoolsâ€) will help them rank well. But such sites also often lacked any really quality content.