Strange stemming results

Misspelling brings up domain in SERPs while correct version does not

[nativenewyorker]

This is a bizarre situation where my domain comes up in SERPS when the keyword phrase is misspelled, yet is nowhere to be found when spelled correctly.

As an example the keyword phrase buy secondhand widgets is also the domain name. All inbound links to the site have the phrase spelled correctly.

When a search is performed for buy secondhand widgets, the site is nowhere to be found. When the search is repeated as buy seconhand widgets with a misspelling, the site appears at the top of the SERPs. Note that the misspelling does not appear on the page shown in the SERPs, nor does it show in anchor text.

I realize that the misspelling is bringing my site up due to stemming, but why wouldn't the correct spelling show up in the SERPs?

[Chicago]

I would not call this stemming. I would instead suggest that you have a florida type filter being applied for your target keyword phrase.

I would also be willing to say that the mispelled occurance appears somewhere by accident in your external anchor text, or internal content. The mispelled occurance KW phrase does not trigger a filter.

[nativenewyorker]

I'd be inclined to believe that except (1) this is a brand new site with only one external link and (2) except for the template there are no links to the index page with the target keyword phrase.

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I had a similar situation.

Blue widget finance had me nowhere.

Blue finance #1

This worked on everyone of my target three word phrases that included the word widget. My domain name includes the word widget with another word right next to it.

The word widget was clearly being discarded in the indexing of the pages and as a result pages with associated terms to widget but which were less relevant for what folks were actually looking for were at the top of SERPs. This provided a very good object lesson in what Google are using as the new part of the algorithm and allowed me to demonstrate in an email to Google waht was going wrong in my area. They have been very responsive and as a result pages from my site are #1 for most of the terms I target now the Brandy results are on www.google.com and .co.uk

Best wishes

Sid

PS Florida was not about a filter, there is no filter, it was about semantic indexing as was Austin and now Brandy. With Brandy it has become more refined.