How important is a domain name?

[Sunfrog]

How important is a domain name? Cuz, look, I just did a google on the word cheese and the websites that came up had these URLs.

ilovecheese
wiki/Cheese
realcaliforniacheese
artisanalcheese
chuckecheese
cheesesociety
murrayscheese

Etc.. so like, the guy who has cheese.com must be pissed because he didn't even come up on the first page. So my question is: does your domain name even matter?

[boron]

Etc.. so like, the guy who has cheese.com must be pissed because he didn't even come up on the first page. So my question is: does your domain name even matter?

You see that is a cheese in all domains you've listed.
Google is trying to rank sites according to relevance. So it will look for cheese keywoard in a title, anchor text of backlinks, domain and in site content.

[Andrew]

Yes, the domain matters. However, the owner of cheese.com doesn't have a great site as it's littered with adsense and probably non-unique content. Also, the sites you listed probably have better SEO techniques, etc. There are a bunch of factors that go into indexing at search engines.

[bdude]

I think that it's good to have a nice and concise name, eg shopdevonport.com.au is better than findshopsindevonport.com.au

[Mystic]

It definitely matters, but its not the only thing that matters. I had read an article that said, that the duration for which the domain is registered also matters. Reportedly, Google believes that a domain is more likely to be legit if its registered for 5 years instead of 1 year.
Also, domain name matters, as it helps in getting repeat visitors, if its small and simple (i.e. something that they can remember).

[boron]

I think that it's good to have a nice and concise name, eg shopdevonport.com.au is better than findshopsindevonport.com.au

Concise name is user friendly for sure, but Google doesn't matter if there are other words in a domain as long it is not spamy stuffed with them. Extra word in a domain will not lower your chance to rank high in Google.

[Submerge]

I do think having a keyword does matter more, but it has very low influence sometimes. :)

[GFin]

I think when it comes down to a number of sites competing at a high level for the top ranks on competitive keywords the domain name can make a difference. For example, I'm sure Tyler will be quick to share his success with keyword 'Poker Forums' and his site domain name PokerForums.org,

Greg