Google no longer ignores stop words...

[Chndru]

I was expecting several posts on this one. hmm..

See,
[google.com...]

[Roger_L]

Notice though that it still doesn't highlight the words 'to' and 'be' in search results, I think they have just done away with the "The word To is a populaur word and has been removed". However I also have a theory that the words are included if google considers all the words related in a single phrase or sentance, that it is likely to or has found on it's result pages.

[cflorin]

Roger_L said: "However I also have a theory that the words are included if google considers all the words related in a single phrase or sentance, that it is likely to or has found on it's result pages."

I don't think so - I did some trivial searches (the book, the car, and others) and Google seems to include them. However, pages with higher PR rank higher even if they don't include stop words (obviously).

[ncgimaker]

Did you notice that it grouped the linked verbs and idioms into phrases.

Each page had a match for "no longer", not just "no" and "longer".

Looks like a query pre-processor converts the search:

Google no longer seems to be ignoring common words

into a query
Google "no longer" seems "to be" ignoring common words

[McMohan]

This is very interesting. Common words such as "it" which also stand for an abbreviation will benefit.

[steveb]

Still ignoring stop words here.

All this shows is they aren't displaying the ignore notice now, right?

[jd01]

Very interesting.

I just did some simple searches. EG 'help for keyword'

I see what ncgimaker is saying... the results at the top were 'help for keyword' and then 'help (other stop words) keyword' then normal results, almost as if they are searching for the exact phrase and allowing for 'stop words' to be considered a part of the phrase.

EG searching for the exact phrase 'help (original stop word) keyword' and 'help (any other stop word) keyword'

Justin