Common Words and Google

what to do?

[guddu]

Hi,

Just happend to note that while Google ignores common words like in, a, the, where, how, etc., it also ignores all those words that are similar to these common words though the meaning might be completely different. I mean the words being commonly used by people for reference.

For Example: IT can be used both as "it" as a
pronoun and "IT" as a short form of information technology, both meaning quite different.

According to Google:
-----------------------

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search.

------------------------

But, the problem is that most of the people do not follow these rules and do not search for specific phrases or attach "+" sign to their search.

How to tackle this situation if you want to promote a website say for the term "IT jobs"?

Thanks & Regards

Guddu

[yonnermark]

its a weird one and I'm no expert but as far I can see, google does not ignore these words even though it claims that it does.

[killroy]

It ignores the word as a reahc method, but it DOES use it for proximity ranking.

SN

[dougmcc1]

guddu, even if you could get Google to distinguish "IT" from "it" and you ranked #1 for "IT jobs" your users still wouldn't find your site because "IT" would still get filtered out of the search query for your users.

[martinibuster]

This is one of the shortcomings about search engines in that you have to RTFM in order to do a real search. Some of the other search engines have addressed this by putting training wheels on their search (i.e. askjeeves.com- "Did you mean...?)

I just did a search for "it jobs" and the blue bar says, "Searched the web for it jobs."

The words "it jobs" is underlined, so that means that it did do the search. I also did a search for the words, do it yourself, and it didn't eliminate "it" from the search.

[dougmcc1]

martinibuster, it says "Searched the web for keyword." for whatever you put into the search bar. It underlines of, and, the, etc. as well.

But notice it says: "it" is a very common word and was not included in your search.

Also, notice how "it" isn't bolded in the results.

What I find interesting is that "it jobs" returns more results than "jobs". 69,300,000 results for "it jobs" and 69,200,000 results for "jobs".

And I figured that since "it" was being filtered out from "it jobs" that " jobs" (with the space) would return the same number of results as "it jobs". But actually " jobs" (with space) returns the same ammount of results as "jobs".

The #9 and #10 results are switched for both keywords as well. The #10 result for "it jobs" is the #9 result for "jobs" and the #10 result for "jobs is the #9 result for "it jobs".

So "it" is making a tiny difference, perhaps due to proximity ranking as killroy mentioned. But not enough to say

it didn't eliminate "it" from the search

What's a 100,000 result difference in 69,000,000 results? (0.1449% in case you were wondering)

[dirkz]

I think people looking for "it jobs" (two words, no phrase) will soon realize that they don't get "it jobs" but jobs in general.

Only those people using "it jobs" as a phrase (with quotes) will reach your site "IT Jobs".

So by optimizing for "IT jobs" you will only get very targeted visitors :)

[James_Dale]

I posed a question to GoogleGuy about this issue back in July:

GoogleGuy, 'IT' means information technology, but 'it' is nevertheless filtered out of IT-related searches, (thereby obscuring relevancy by several million extraneous results). To see what I mean, try clicking the following three URLs. The first two show identical results, yet the third asks if I mean "IT outsourcing", proving that Google does recognise the term.

[google.com...]

[google.com...]

[google.com...]

GoogleGuy's response:

Hey, I'll pass on the suggestions. :) I think the tests we did showed that "it" as a stopword was a net win, but I'll ask again. :)

Best,
GoogleGuy

[dpplgngr]

all the web handles this one with aplomb.

[DerekH]

dpdlngr wrote
>>all the web handles this one with aplomb.

Surely then, it is only a matter of time before google handles it with two plombs?

DerekH