gouri - 5:41 pm on Aug 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

Generally speaking, many recent observations seem to support the conclusion that exact match in title matters much less than it used to. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it actually hurts but it doesn't seem to help much.

If you are trying to rank for a 4 word phrase, for instance, have you guys seen recently that adding a couple of words to the title tag helped to rank for the 4 word phrase?

Exact matches of the first part of titles is the only way to compete for a phrase, but exact matches in later words in the title perform better if that exact match is actually in the body of the page, which normally is rare.

Recently, I put a four word phrase that I am trying to rank for in the title tag (with no other words) and the same phrase is in the body of the page as well but I have not been able to rank for the phrase.

It is a little hard to make sense of that situation.