Over a year ago, Google introduced an algorithm to reduce the amount of exact match domains from showing up when those EMDs are not as useful as other sites.
Some at WebmasterWorld have noticed that in some niches the EMDs are back. One said that he is now seeing old EMDs that dropped down after the EMD update have returned, while he is also seeing new EMDs showing up more often as well.
Another SEO added:
Location-based EMDs, such as widgetville-something dot TLD, have been doing extremely well in the SERPs.
Have you seen EMDs come back in the search results?
I guess for search terms like [new york web development] and such, you'd see a nice number of EMDs?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.