Originally Posted by PornMD

It may not always be the silver bullet it used to be (though the site Socks mentioned and some I've seen myself would beg to differ) but in conjunction with a sound SEO/content strategy, it can only help.

I think what may ultimately suffer are hyphen EMDs. It used to be that search engines wouldn't see them any differently, but given they look spammier to most humans (especially if it's a non-.com), fewer people click through and people would be quick to bounce off if they don't immediately see what they're looking for, so ultimately those wouldn't rank well for long if they would at all.

But yea, you can't really EXPECT to rank an EMD well with a thin site anymore. It can still happen, but you can lose the ranking as easily as you got it, if you can even get it.

Consider this though: The matching words still get bolded, which helps the domain stand out, which arguably attracts more clicks, which in turn can help the rankings improve. Also, Google does still look for relevance, and any match including in the domain help with determining that.

We primarily sell mainstream EMD and business has been up this year, so I presume that they must still be working well for many people.