I have been following the Candy.com website launch ever since the domain name sold for $3 Million USD (+ 2% royalties) to watch the category killer domain name climb the ranks in search engines. Since the domain was a parking page before being sold, I thought it would be interesting to watch the site climb in search engines with the killer domain Candy.com but having a full website with it.
When Candy.com launched in July of 2009, the site really didn’t exist in SE’s. It was indexed but not any place where people could actually find it by searching for what people search for when buying candy online! Since the start, I have put the focus on the specific exact match keyword candy as the search term and how it ranks.
Recap for Ranking on Google.com
On Aug 12th 2009 I had reported that Candy.com ranked #2 on Page #4 for the search term candy.
By September 14, 2009 Candy.com continued to climb in the natural search engine rankings for the search term candy. On Google.com, Candy.com then ranked on Page 2, # 7!
By November 14, 2009 it seemed that Candy.com had hit a little bump in the road and dropped one spot on Google to Page 2, # 8!
As of Today, February 17, 2010 Candy.com is still stuck on page 2 at Google and even dropped another spot to Page 2, # 9! If it drops 2 spots total, it will end up on Page 3!
The current trend appears the domain is going the wrong way for its peak Page 2, # 7 spot. Not far clearly, but positive gains are always better.
Ranking on Bing and Yahoo
September 14, 2009 Candy.com held a page 2, # 5 spot for the candy search term.
November 14, 2009 Candy.com has dropped off the map on Bing.com . After digging 8 pages in, I did find the sub-domain, blog.candy.com
February 17, 2010 and Candy.com still is no place to be found but the sub-domain blog.candy.com climbed to a Page 3, # 3 listing just below two listings for Candy.org.
Yahoo.com has never been kind to Candy.com since I have been tracking it. I have often looked 7+ pages deep and never found Candy.com ranking for the search term candy. Today, February 17, 2010 is no different. I dug some 7+ pages and no rankings for Candy.com what so ever.
Social Media for Candy.com
Candy.com does promote its site with Twitter.com and Facebook.com . They do update each account a fair amount but the following is very poor IMO! The twitter account for Candy.com (candydotcom) has a tiny following of 375 people at time of posting and they only follow 14. The Candy.com Facebook fan page has a little better following of 2,281 fans at posting.
Getting people to TALK about Candy.com is important and using social media is a way to do it inexpensively, so I think more focus needs to be put on this! Growing traffic to the site will help it rank better in search engines! The sites main source of traffic is likely the direct navigation, Facebook fan page, the page 2 rank for the search term candy and the search term candy.com, social media, paid advertising with Google Adwords and the affiliate program with CJ.com.
I see no reason why Candy.com can’t rank at least in the Top 5 of P1 on Google for the matching search term of its domain name but really has not moved since back in September 2009, actually dropping 2 spots. It still has only been 5 months since ranking on Page 2 at Google, but each passing day is important, let alone months! According to Google’s Adwords tool, globally the exact term candy is searched for over 1.2 Million times Per Month! Not ranking high for that term is a Big Deal, because a lot of traffic is going to the P1 listings (mainly the top 5).
Candy.com may want to consider hiring a professional SEO company and maybe try some different tactics on the Social Media side to help a little bit. They are currently using a default WordPress theme that looks nothing like Candy.com and when viewing it, looks pretty unprofessional IMO. Nothing really "links back" to Candy.com from the "blog" which doesn’t help either. One small link on the upper right sidebar was all that I could see, so this doesn’t help drive traffic TO Candy.com. That is the reason behind the blog and promoting with it on social networking sites! Since the blog is used to promote things via Social Networking, not allowing people to easily click over to Candy.com and buy your products, doesn’t make sense to me! The blog is a good idea, it just needs to be used better and look like Candy.com.
Clearly a lot of people still use Yahoo and Bing, so putting some focus on those search engines as well as getting that P1 on Google could greatly help. The traffic surge and likely sales will grow drastically if Candy.com can grab a top 3-5 spot on Google for the candy search term IMO.
The site is still young but it needs to prevent the dropping of SERP’s it already has.
Steve
Nice analysis – thanks for the update!
Free Domain Newsletter
Rick Schwartz was too greedy with this sale. I think that they are either going to get the debt reduced or go out of business with the payment on that name. If they paid cash for it then they shouldn’t go out of business but they would have still made a huge mistake.
Leonard Britt
I’m sure the domain gets type-in traffic and probably ranks better for some long-tail phrases but would you be happy spending $3 million to be at the bottom of page two? Note they have an Adwords campaign at Google for “candy”…
Jamie Zoch
@Leonard,
I think spending $3 Million should help PREVENT you from spending ad $$ but since they are just starting out, doing the ads are smart, but it should also help improve your SE rankings IMO. Which it appears not to be happening.
JB
Most of the backlinks to candy.com are not related to candy. They are heavy towards the domain name acquisition etc…
They need to focus on getting backlinks related to what their product is to gain serp. Doesn’t look like they done this yet.
Singh
Totally waste of money.
Rick Schartz is too greedy I agree with that. Candy.com made a huge mistake bought this domain for 3 million.
May be 100,000 k should be enough and they should have had 2.9 on adwords then they wud have great traffic and great sales.
But 3 million for candy.com domain name is HUGE mistake.!!
Bill Kara
Page rank is a tough thing, even with good SEO you’ll need in-bound links and you’ll need a steady stream of them over time and from quality related sources.
It’s a long climb to the top of any major search term. Having said that you have to sell ALOT of bubble gum to re-cap 3 MM.
I hope they are able to do this for the entire industry sake.
I like eggs
Is the 2% royalty from Rick Schwartz getting typo traffic on wwwcandy.com?
Anunt
The domain candy.com is not worth $3 Million … not even close!
I bet there are more type-in visitors on candy.com looking for a live cam porn site than people looking for the actual candy.
I bet when Rick bought the domain candy.com, he was adding to his collection of porn domain names and ended up selling it to a candy company…LOL
Jack
IMHO, this poor ranking is partly due to the numerous articles about the sale of this domain on domaining blogs (nothing bad about these articles by itself, but the fact is here).
Candy.com is now also related to keywords like “domaining”, “domain investing”, “domain names”, and not with “Candy”.
I don’t see an easy solution to this. Maybe Rick shouldn’t have covered it on his own domain related blog to start with?
Leonard Britt
Time will tell whether buying the category killer .COM domain vaults the company into the big leagues or whether the pricetag actually hurts the company.
Singh
@ leonard
it will hurt the company for sure. May be Candies.com would been better.
but surely its not a good price tag there. someone made a mistake
SL
This brings up an interesting point, though it’s pure conspiracy theory territory.
I’m showing candy.com as the only sponsored ad for the exact term. Right smack on top of page 1 with the yellow highlight in the searcher’s sweet spot, so to speak. And showing the absolute perfect domain for the search term.
As a search engine it would be so tempting to keep an advertiser’s organic position off page 1 if they’re spending a boatload for this type of PPC. After all, the ingredients in Google’s magic soup are unknown so there’s plausible deniability if the advertiser never makes it page 1 organically.
Again, just a thought experiment, absolutely not saying that’s what’s actually happening.
Jamie Zoch
@SL
It is an interesting point and I have heard discussion of the same situation, but reversed. A site already holding the #1 spot and still heavily advertising to help Keep the spot. I guess there is really no way to prove it either way but it makes you wonder sometimes.
Shai Neubauer
I think this article and the comments afterwards put too much emphasis on the rankings of just one keyword. I dont care what site you run and what domain or main keyword you have but one keyword will NEVER make or break your site. I dont think we can consider Candy.com to be a failure based on the fact that it comes up on page 2 of google for the term “candy”. I think its a great accomplishment to actually have done that. Imagine how many “candy” sites they are compting against who have been around for over 10 years. Thats where the power of the domain comes in. The overall success should be compared to the overall traffic, revenue, users, etc. the site is amassing and according to Compete.com it seems they are doing just fine.
Sophia
Age, content and candy related backlinks. It will all come in due time. I would clean up the very long title though to Candy | Candy Store | Bulk Candy