Keyword Phrasing

[createErrorMsg]

I had a quick keyword question I hoped someone might be able to answer. Forgive the neophytism...

Say the Overture keyword tool indicated 2000 searches for Child widgets and 100 searches for Children's widgets. Will using "Child widgets" show up for either search?

In other words, do overture/google/yahoo/etc automatically match the phrase within the phrase, or does the keyword have to be an exact match? In this example, using the phrase "child widget" in the page content may not make sense -- as in "Click here to buy fun child widgets!" -- wheras "children's widgets" does. If I use "children's widgets" in the text, will SEs pick that up and list it under the "child widget" search phrase?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

cEM

[growingdigital]

I think what you are referring here to is word stemming.

To quote from another search engine forum:

Stemming is the conversion of a word to its simplest part. For example, stemming would convert to stem, simplest would convert to simple, etc.

I have found you need to optimize for both. If you do a search for the literal term "child widget" or "children's widgets" you will note that you will get totally different results. Substitute widget for any other word and you will most likely see the same effects.

There have been big strides in the last few years regarding word stemming, but I think the SE's have a long way to go.

So in short, optimize for both.