So lets say your company / website has some wishful thinking.. use the acronym of your company name but as a domain name you do not own as the page title. Case in point, Quality Dairy, owners of the domain name QualityDairy.com not QD.com!
Ever do a search on Google for “QD.com”? I did for you:
Out of nearly 500K results, Quality Dairy ranks #1 for a domain name they do not even own?
Well, here are some facts
- QD.com is NOT owned by Quality Dairy
- It has never been since at least 2003 according to whois history records
Shaddy practice? Considering the fact that QualityDairy.com does not own QD.com and they may have never owned it.. I think so. To own QD.com would cost Quality Dairy a lot of milk money! Likely high six figures, if not 7 in today’s market. In fact the domain name just sold, but that is a different story but the buyers are not Quality Dairy.
So why use the domain name as a page title?
Searches, eyeballs, free traffic! EMD searches for “qd” are around 33K a month. Although EMD searches for “qd.com” are much lower around 100, this isn’t always the case… because a lot of people search Google for things they already know! Like the domain name they are “looking for”.
Disception? Somebody doing a search for qd.com may think they will be actually visiting qd.com due to the page title, but in this case, the domain name they are actually visiting is QualityDairy.com.
Using the qd.com page title for QualityDairy.com ranks the page number 1 out of 28.6 Million results, even without quotes around the domain.
Is this the “poor mans” way of “using a domain name not owned” for keyword juice?
QD.com at time of this article only has 1 indexed page and it’s on a sub-domain that doesn’t resolve. Why Google wouldn’t slap the site with a penalty for acting like a site they are not, I’m not sure.
In general, I think the tactic of using a domain name you do not own as a page title is shaddy. IMO, it gives distrust to your company if the users know the fact that Quality Dairy doesn’t even own the domain name QD.com!
All is fine and dandy if Quality Dairy uses the acronym QD as its page title, but not something they are not… QD.com!
On Quality Dairy’s defense, they very likely did not build the website for its company. In fact, on the bottom of the website, it states it’s “Powered By: TheMediaAdvantage”.
I reached out to QualityDairy.com for comment, but I have not heard back at time of publication.
I have seen this a few times. RealTruck.com was using the domain TruckAccessories.com in their Google ads even though Elliot Silver actually owned the domain. With certain domains it does give them a lot more trust factor as the authority in their field. It is shady though. Google allows it as long as it’s not a trademark.