Is punctuation considered?

[Regent]

I'm trying to position a site for a keyword with an apostrophe in it, for example's sake let's say the keyword is "it's time". I am getting ranked very well for the kewyord without the apostrophe "its time" but I'm not ranking at all for the keyword with the apostrophe. I optimized the site for it with the apostrophe, in fact the non-apostrophe keyword is not mentioned anywhere on the site. Also, analyzing what's ranking for "it's time", the competition is non-existent. So why am I not ranking for the apostrophe version.

Does anyone know if Google disregards punctuation in a keyword search? Or any other input to shed light on this?

Thanks.

[webnewton]

What could be better that testing it for your example keyword. I can see that the resuts differ for "it's time" and "its time".

Google definately considers punctuations. Try puttin it in H1 or in title.

[rfgdxm1]

>Google definately considers punctuations. Try puttin it in H1 or in title.

Yep. I remember a case where someone was complaining that a certain music venue with "brothers" in the name was unfindable, even when the city and state were added to the search. The problem was the correct name included "brother's". He was searching without the apostrophe.

[jetboy_70]

It's the same with accented characters, and you have to make compromises. Björk is considered different from Bjork. The former is the correct version, but 99% of searches will be for the latter.

[jetboy_70]

Probably more pertinent to the original question:

'it's time' (standard keyboard apostrophe) is considered a different search term to 'it’s time' (single right quotation mark).

So what search terms you match for will depend on what you're using as an apostrophe on your pages.

[caveman]

Other possibilities:

1) I understand that you're just offering an example with the word "it's", but if in fact you're optimizing on a stopword (like "it's") then you have an uphill battle on your hands, especially if the stop word is the first in the phrase.

2) At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you could have gone too far on the optimization, which might explain why a similar variation is doing well for you, but not your intended exact phrase.

[troels nybo nielsen]

Sorry to say so, jetboy_70, but your example with Björk has nothing to do with punctuation. "Bjork" is a simple misspelling where one letter is substituted with another.

[jetboy_70]

troels nybo nielsen,

I wouldn't argue with that, but it is an example of Google's literal interpretation of search terms, and having to make linguistic compromises to turn up on appropriate SERPs, which I felt was pertinent to this thread.

[troels nybo nielsen]

I get your point. There is no doubt that what counts for search engines is pragmatism, not whether a particular spelling of a search term is "correct" or not.