Are Exact Match Domains Still Worth it?

I def prefer them

IMO, unless you go for very thin sites and fairly low competition terms, they're not worth the hassle.

You end up building new sites over and over again, instead of beefing up current ones and slowly turning them into authority sites. You CAN SEO one post at a time too.

thin sites have no future, if they do at all any more.

still worth it if you do something with them, building thin amazon etc... type sites will rank for a tad then usually drop off if no unique content. Over the last 9-10 years of selling .com domains the majority of my sales have been keyword .com exact match mainstream domains.

Well it certainly hasn't happened yet.

Look at this site: http://www.ellamilano.net/

Blog with 7 posts, no text per post except for an affiliate link, footer is unedited and selling placeholder sample ebooks...

But it ranks #3 for "ella milano" its best possible keyword.

Good points. Another issue is FUTURE-PROOFING. Google Semantic Algorithm change is a question of WHEN not IF. At that point, the focus is less on keywords but on themes. Not just themes based on keyword clusters but keyword themes with social media inputs/buzz.

google is already using social media signals as ranking. it is much easier to rank sites getting lots of natural social sharing than one who has none.

And how do you know if it ranks so well because of EMD or because of quality backlinks?
Backlinks is and was way more important than EMD. Your post proves nothing.

It ranks number 2 from Google.com LOL.

all things being equal having an emd will give you an advantage.

period.

Exactly. Especially if it seems like you are also the legitimate "brand" for the EMD. It'll be harder than hell to unseat you for your EMD term when that's the case and you have any amount of decent seo otherwise. Anyone saying otherwise has never been #2 chasing #1 for that phrase. ;)

Probably using differing data centers. MY DC is reporting #1 rank for that term for ellamilano.net

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.