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Specifically, "email troops" provides my website URL with #2 position on page 1, and unquoted, the same search does not include my url in the first 500 listings (10 pages of 50 items each). The disparity dumbounds me.
Please, can anyone explain why?
Thanks, Gunner M
New Bern, NC
Unquoted - could be Girl Guides troops content and an email link somewhere on the page -- where the terms in this context has nothing to with email troops -- at least in your context.
Someone might still like the cookies! ;)
"John Smith" will only find "John Smith", but John Smith will find Murphy (John), Jones (Mark), Smith (Fred)..
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it is interesting to note that less that 12 hours after i posed the question, the unquoted search argument - email troops - also jumped up to 2nd position on page 1. that fact makes it even murkier to me.
many, many thanks to amoore, fathom, jomaxx, vincevincevince and jon80.
gunnerm
new bern, nc
1. Probably, maybe, perhaps 20%, probably fewer, of the people who -find my sites- do so with quoted search strings. This may just mean that I'm higher in the SERPs for those strings quoted than unquoted, of course.
2. Almost half of the people who find my site via SE's are using fairly specific, abstract searches; not "email troops" but perhaps 'email british royal marines kuwait'. And about half of these searches, or one-quarter of the total, have nothing to do with my site whatsoever. It really makes me wonder, sometimes, the things people search for...
3. "email" is an almost impossible keyword to be competetive for. I've tried, for almost a year, to get a site (a pretty good-sized, pr3/pr2 site with a lot of links) into the top *100* SERP results on Google, FAST, or Inktomi for the phrases "a-certain-minority-religion email", or "a-certain-minority-religion email service". And, while I can get *close* for those two phrases *in quotes*, It's just not going to happen for the phrase without quotes, period. I've diversified towards a couple of other terms, and do quite well for those...
Take heart, though; a lot of people (from my experience) hyphenate "e-mail", and that's a significantly easier word to compete on. :)
I would love a quoted search option on the Google home page. Someone suggested a few months ago that the "I'm feeling lucky" button should be replaced with "I would like this exact term"....how may others would like to see this happen?
YEs me! I think ive used that button once in 3 or 4 years. It used to give google some sort of brand recognition and backed up their releveance but im not sure that it is as needed anymore. For almost all intents and pruposes the "lucky" button is now a waste of space and seems increasingly more like a gimmick.
Very very few people use quotes. Very few know you can. i never even bother to check rankings for quoted phrases, as these SERPS are very rarely used. Havent seen any figures lately but i think 10% or 20% are major over-estimations. I would guess 1% or much less, especially if you have a non-web savvy or non-research type audience.
I don't much worry about it.
Quotes can bring decent traffic on some phrases. I'll take them!