Having keywords in your domain has always had some significance in SEO. A few years ago, this used to be a very powerful way to get your site ranking, but many SEOs feel that it’s importance has diminished over recent years.

In case you’re not familiar with what I mean, I’m talking about domains which have a match on the keyword you’re trying to target. For example if you wanted to target the keyphrase “buy flowers online” the domain buyflowersonline.com has a good chance of ranking well. These types of sites usually rank with minimal inbound links, a small amount of content and limited on-page SEO simply because of their domain name.

But does this still play a large part in search engine ranking? Previous studies have seen this tactic have a greater influence in Yahoo! and Microsoft SERPs – so let’s take a quick look at some of the results now that Bing has been launched:

First search for “unblock myspace”:

• Google – 3 domains with key phrase
• Yahoo! – 5 domains with key phrase
• Bing – 4 domains with key phrase

Second search is for “poker forum”:

• Google – 3 domains with key phrase
• Yahoo! – 3 domains with key phrase
• Bing – 5 domains with key phrase

Third search results for “free wallpapers”:

• Google – 4 domains with key phrase
• Yahoo! – 5 domains with key phrase
• Bing – 4 domains with key phrase

Overall results:

• Google - 10 domain matches
• Yahoo! - 13 domain matches
• Bing – 13 domain matches

While this is quite a limited search sample, it still appears that Microsoft and Yahoo! are placing more weight in domain name matches than Google. These results also show that the practice still carries some weight in determining the ranking of your site, with many of the number 1 rankings using exact matches.

What do you think? Do keywords in the domain name still play an important part in SEO? Let us know via the poll below: