Plural Searching

Any stats available?

[Rob_Cook]

I'm curious as to whether people general search using plurals or not. I appreciate that stats will vary considerably from search term to term.

For example, if someone is looking for a new radio (not the area I'm interesting in) would they, statistically, be more likely to search for 'new radio' or 'new radios'?

This brings me (eventually) to Google. Does it matter which they search for when optimising? If I had the choice, would I be better getting new-radio.com or new-radios.com? Or does Google manipulate the results to take off the plural, making the search 'new radio' regardless?

Thanks in advance.

[troyid]

You can find out easily by using Overture Keyword suggestion tool or word tracker

Google uses word stemming in some circumstances so that the results will be the same for 'word' or 'words'

You would be better off targeting the word version that will give you the greatest chance for more traffic but with the least amount of competition.

[Rob_Cook]

I avoid using Overture's stats as I've always found them highly inaccurate/inflated. Unless someone is going to contradict that...?

[UDaMan]

I would also say that using Overture to predict Google results is not being as accurate as you could be. Try doing a few searches for your target term and see what comes up in the first few pages of the Google results.

[sem4u]

Try checking Wordtracker or even better run a small AdWords campaign.

[karmov]

From what I've been told, it's not that Overture's stats are wrong, but skewed. The kind of people searching on Overture are not going to be the same kind of people who search on Google. Since the results are PPC it makes much more sense to do more B2B searches on Overture for example. The explanation made sense to me, so I thought I'd share :)

[Galtego]

Wordtracker is good for this question because it preserves number while Overture singularizes. Radio is a tough test word because radio is a thing without number as well as a singular noun. But using Wordtracker for a couple of other things, searchers prefer plurals 3 to 5 times more than singulars. 5 times more searches for cars than car. 3 times more searches for boats than boat.

[MarkWolk]

There is no general rule on whether users type the plural or the singular. It all depends on the search words. As mentioned before, Google Adwords might give a better hint than Overture. My personal experience is with the search term "tours", as I am a tour operator. I found out that users looking for a broad range of tours would use the plural, i.e. "Australia tours", whereas users looking for more specific tours would tend to use the singular, i.e. "Great Barrier Reef tour". Once again, that's my experience, and it might vary from industry to industry.

[dirkz]

From my personal experience people tend to use singular when searching for something they want in single quantity.

In other words, if you want to buy a widget you search for widget. If you want to trade with widgets and search for vast quantities of them from wholesale this could be different.

[netguy]

unlike dirkz experience, my logs show differently. A full 2-1 to 3-1 are plural for most product categories.

Rob, to use your analogy of searching for radios, I believe the reason I consistently see plural searches is because most people search like they think: They are looking for "radios" - Not - they are looking for "radio." [Again this is for broad category searches, such as people looking for "cars," not people looking for "car."]

In contrast, searching for a particular brand is just the opposite. Singular strongly outweighs plural when looking for a particular manufacturer or model, i.e. most search for TiVo, Dell, or Motorola - Not - TiVos, Dells, or Motorolas.

Of course, all of this is meaningless if you are lucky enough to be selling scissors or pants. ;)

Steve

[dirkz]

> unlike dirkz experience, my logs show differently.

I take that as proof that it varies wildly with your category (or even exact phrase).

[Rob_Cook]

All valuable feedback. Appreciated.

[netguy]

>>I take that as proof that it varies wildly

I'm not sure what your question is. While there are exceptions, I can say that an overwhelming majority of broad category product searches (such as in my examples), are typically 2-1 or more. This is across hundreds of product categories in several dozen sites, and shown to be true on both site logs and large banner campaigns (using both singular and plural) over the years.

This is for exact search words/phrases only. The use of 'both' singular and plural should obviously be covered, but every page must be optimized for what will bring in the most traffic - with secondary keywords/phrases and content to cover the rest.

dirkz, we may be saying the same thing, but thinking of different keywords. 'Radio,' for example, even if you are are searching for a single quantity, will typically be plural because people are looking for search results on more than one particular type or model of radio (otherwise they would have been more specific in the search).

If a person knows what he/she is looking for, then they might be searching for 'AM-FM portable radio,' for example, but this is outside the single keyword/phrase, broad product category I outlined above.

Steve