Singular vs Plural domain name

[TimL85]

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Hi Guys,

Could you give me some advice on which is better in terms of ranking in Google - plurals vs singular keyword domain names. I.e. blue-widget.co.uk vs. blue-widgets.co.uk

The search popularity for my key phrase is higher in the plural form, but I know that Google now sorta 'understands' plurals.

Would it be best to buy both and redirect the singular to the plural?

Does Google only give weight if the domain is an [exact] match?

Any advice would be great....thanks.

[wistop]

Yep I was gonna say that google understand plurals (so they say). Id buy the plural one because a search for the singular will still match your domain.

Id also wait until you know whether the site will work or not before going crazy and buying them all up. Domain name is only one factor in a large puzzle, at the end of the day your rank and ultimate success will largely depend on relevant backlinks etc.

The downside of multiple domains is all your backlinks could be split or Goog will see them as duplicate content and sometimes one will rank and not the other and it gets messy. Although nothing that would be the end of the world...

I ended up wasting so much on domain names (after that lightbulb moment) that I ended up buying a couple of generic addresses and now I prefer to subdomain. eg widgets.website.com or morewidgets.website.com

Obviously the key is getting something nice and generic that wont put people off (no one will want to go to widgets.qsd7d.com!). I find sites rank just fine like this . Your keywords get bolded nicely and stand out well. Get a nice short easy going friendly "brandable" domain and I reckon most people wont even notice. Nice if you like throwing up lots of experimental sites around single widgets! Who knows get a few successes and the domain may build into a brand itself! It then becomes an attractor not a repellant!

Note that goog treats them as separate sites so they dont share "link juice" and another point to note is they wont show lots of links from different subdomains on 1 search results page (they make exceptions for ebay, etc).

Anyways GL!

[accelerator]

1) Would it be best to buy both and redirect the singular to the plural?

2) Does Google only give weight if the domain is an [exact] match?

1) If you are redirecting the singular, it's not going to give you any advantage apart from direct type-in traffic (low for .co.uk) and preventing anyone else using it. It would be best to buy both and build a site for both with unique content on both. If necessary, make the singular site smaller and link through to the plural site from your body text.

If the keyphrase is good though, definitely buy both singular and plural domain names. .co.uk domain names aren't really that expensive at £6 a pop.

2) I'm sure you get additional weight for exact match that's why you want to hold both the singular and plural domains so you can do well on both.

For more domain name investment advice see:

Domain Name Trading Resources

Rgds

[tbp]

I would go for the term that gets the most searches.

Google does rank plural and singular terms differently, for example I have a couple of sites where the most searched term gives the site at number 1, where as for the other term the site ranks at number 3 /4.

[TimL85]

Really great advice there from all of you - big thanks for answering my q's!!

I'm definitely gonna buy both for this particular phrase and see how it takes off. I'd love to do unique content on both but I'm struggling with copy for this niche area. Not exactly a lot you can really say on it.

I'll also have a good think about a generic term domain as suggested by you Wistop!

Thanks again...