Does google acknowldge punctuation in keywords?

widget's color vs. widgets color.

[Soze]

I have a very good spot for widget's color but can't find it anywhere near for widgets color.

Funny thing is, I didn't even use an apostrophe. I only used the keyword widgets color.

Anyone else see this? How does google determine this?

[jenniann111]

From my experience Google is pretty good at stemming, so I think they see a word with and without an apostrophe as basically the same. That's why you can show up for words that you don't have in your text. (Also, someone may have linked to you with the non-apostrophe version of the term in the link text.)

However, all other things being equal (same links, content etc), G will rank the site with the exact match of the query over the stemmed match.