Some say it is indeed a penalty, others say it is more like an advantage for EMDs have been lessoned. I've been seeing EMDs with relatively strong back links rank, so I'm inclined to think that if there is a penalty then it has a switch where it turns off or it could be over-powered by a back-link profile. Opinions?
Seeing lots of emds ranking atm.
I don't think there is a penalty or specific boost. It's just about keys in url and anchor text % as usual, imo.
It's easy to overoptimize an emd, since it already has keys in the url and brand/url type links are going to be exact match type links. People who don't grasp this overoptimize, get penalty and assume it's because emd. In part, they are right, as a brand domain with the same link campaign/profile would be less likely be penalized. However, it's because they weren't careful or thoughtful with anchor density in relation to the domain.
yeah I have a client who launched an emd as part of a big reshuffle and I was a little worried that we would have issues, it was shortly after the official announcement that it was no longer a benefit - however ranks far better than I would have expected it to and the CTR is fantastic, would more than make up for a sligt drop in ranking I suspect.
anchor is very varied because there are lots of sub categories of the product, some of which it is outranked on by the more specific emds, but it still in general beats the rest of the sites out there. It does have good general SEO though and the site we redirected was up there anyway - so not sure if something more spammy would have issues.
I had an EMD site see traffic evaporate when Google rolled out the anti-EMD measures, but it was a site that in no way deserved the rankings it had. It only had them because we chose to exploit a small niche by buying an EMD.
I saw no evidence the site was penalized. It just reverted to the level of traffic it deserved based on its content... which is to say, almost none.