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i.e. the keyword widgets would be found in a search for widget or widgets.
So I used the plural form "widgets" and a search for "widgets" gets me a SERP of 2, but a search for the singular form "widget" does not rank on Google at all.
What's up?
It doesn't use 'stemming'.... ie, trek, treks, trekked, trekking, trekker are all different words to Google.
If you want to rank for both plural and singular, you need to optimise for both.. probably separate pages.
Word Variations (Stemming)
To provide the most accurate results, Google does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. In other words, Google searches for exactly the words that you enter in the search box. Searching for "googl" or "googl*" will not yield "googler" or "googlin". If in doubt, try both forms: "airline" and "airlines," for instance.
This causes problems for optimizers, a Google serach of this site [google.com...] returns 189 hits for "keyword OR keywords plural"!
I looked through my site and noticed that I was naturally using the plural forms on almost all my tiles, headings, links and anything else that was important to readers or search engines. I recently rewrote a number of pages to also include the singular key phrases. this was not the easiest for me, because I wanted my site sound correct for human readers because it doesn't matter how many people come to your site, if they can't understand what you have written or it makes you sound bad, they are not going to be as inclined to buy from you.
Cheers,
Paul Ewing
