Google and apostrophes

G's handling of special characters

[jetboy_70]

A lot of blogs and CSS sites tend to use a single right quotation mark in place of an apostrophe in body copy. It's solely for visuals, and replaces the usual keyboards accessible apostrophe (') with a slanted one (’).

A search on Google for the possessive form of widget using a real apostrophe (widget's) returns a lot less results than with the quotation mark (widget’s). In fact using the quotation mark is the same as using a space (widget s).

It seems pretty clear than if the possessive form is a term you're trying to rank on, only a real apostrophe will do.

What I'd like to know is does the use of either an apostrophe or a quotation mark impact upon your ability to rank for the singular version?

i.e. For a search on widget, is having widget's or widget’s on your page a worse choice than just widget?

[millie]

I think it would be treated as a partial match. So the singular section of the word would be recognised but would likely not rank so well as the pure singular variant.