brinked - 8:55 am on Dec 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

Robert Charlton the query I noted in that response was just a similar type query I was using as an example. I have done many searches over the last 2 months for various things and the quality has taken a turn for the worse lately. I was using that term as a generic kind of how we use widgets.

I know how google does not always return exact title matches but one industry I monitor for example went from 9 of the top ten "free widget" results having free widget as the first 2 words in their titles to only having 3 sites in the top ten having the exact match as first in the title tag.

I think this is product/ecommerce related. I really think google is doing this to try to correct an issue with exact product matches that many sites are taking advantage of and I wont fault them for that. If thats the case, I really hope that they adjust this to only effect ecommerce type sites.

Here is how you can do your own test. Do a search on something as you normall would. Except do this allintitle:"type your search here"

I am doing that and I am finding much more useful results than without exact allintitle matches.