Do search engines look at content of Domain Name?

[jamesx521]

Hi,

I was wondering if Search engines are more likely to rank a site about tourism HIGHER if the Domain Name included the word "tourism."

Do search engines look at domain names at all?

Well let's say search engines DO look at domain names; would they recognize the word "tourism" if it was combined with another word?
Example:
SuperTourism.com
supertourism.com
super-tourism.com
tourZm.com


Are there specific meta tags that tell the robots to search the domain name?

Thanks.

James

[rsd]

To my knowledge, there is no meta tag to tell the search engine to look at the domain name or not, only whither to index the page or not.
Most of the search engines don't put very much pertinence to the meta tags anymore. They are more concerned with valid content. It does help to have important keywords in your page names, links, and quite possible the domain name as well. Depending on how the search engine algorithms work this week (they constantly change) you might want to put a dash between words as in your third example just to separate words better. As a visitor, I would also be more likely to go to a site that has a domain name that mimics the topic I'm looking for.
Hope this helps.

[jamesx521]

Why would you as a visitor
"be more likely to go to a site that has a domain name that mimics the topic I'm looking for?"

jms

[Intensity]

Having a keyword in any fashion you have listed is going to dramatically boost your SERP's in Google.

www.yourkewords.com should be essential in good SEO practice.
(wish I knew that before I registered my business name)

[jamesx521]

So, your suggestion is that let's say I have a site about snow skiing, the site would do better with the search engines if the words "snow skiing" are in the domain name. And obviosly the words "snow skiing" would be included in the meta keywords.

jms

[Intensity]

Exaclty.

I believe that the biggest factors on your website SERP's come from the domain name and Title.