Question about common words

common word exclusion changes results

[tenerifejim]

Hi everyone, I've been reading this board for the past couple of months now and have found it really useful, thanks.

I'd just like to ask a question about a phenomena that I have discovered with the listings of one of my site. I'm not sure if this has been noted before, and if so, I would gladly be redirected.

The problem is this. I type "widgets" in "country" and am told by google that the word "in" is too common and not used in my search. I can't help thinking that therefore "widget" "country" should produce the same results. It does not.

Anyone know why? I always thought you had to explicitly identify a word with a '+' if you wished to search on it.

Is google lying to me about the common word thing or am just being stupid?

[Stefan]

The difference in the serps happens because they are two different searches. ¦widgets country¦ looks for occurences of those two words right next to each other, in that order. ¦widgets in country¦ looks for ¦widgets commonword country¦. You'll get an identical serp using of/a/and etc as the commonword. If you use a non-commonword, Google will look for that particular three kw phrase.

ADDED: Sorry, man. Welcome to WW. Good to hear that you read for a while before posting your first time. Be sure to use the site search often now that you're registered... it's a great source of info.

ADDED AGAIN: As far as I know, ¦"widget" "country"¦ is identical to ¦widget country¦. ¦"widget" in "country"¦ is ¦widget commonword country¦. Putting quotes around single words doesn't accomplish anything. If you try ¦"widget in country"¦, then it looks for that particular phrase.

<edit>removing quotes, inserting ¦ for clarity</edit>