Singular vs Plural

[jaimes]

Hi, for years we always ranked similar for a very competitive keyword both singular and plural. Since April when we got hit with lots of supplementals we shuffled a bit, but now that the Plural " WidgetS " ranks back again the singular " Widget " is still pages away.

Has anyone noticed the dicrepancy for their words? I have bought inbound 1 way links with the singular and no help

Are there any good tests out there to see what the problem might be, any thoughts?

[tedster]

I've been following several singular/plural variations for a few months - and there certainly has been a lot of change. What I currently think is happening is this: Google has moved beyond using stemming alone and is factoring some measure of user intention. More for some words than others, user intention is quite different between singular and plural word forms - and thus the search results that will "satisfy" the end user can be quite different. For example. consider which form is more likely as a request for information or as a true shopping search.

Just my best guess for now. This is one case where on-page factors and traffic factors may be overriding link text and straight semantics.