Google Suggest now favouring singular over plural terms?

[stukerr]

I'm not sure if this is related to the panda update in the UK, seems to have happened around the same time, but a lot of my key search terms now seem to show the singular when you start typing in the google search box, wheras before they were showing the plural.

Just wondered if anyone else had noticed this or whether it was just google suggest having a 'dance' of some sort and re-aligning what it suggest to what people have actually been searching ?

[tedster]

I don't see any clear preference - it's a mixed bag for me. Of course, I haven't collected a lot of data so there may have been a widespread shift, but it's more likely to be a term by term change.

One thing to keep in mind is that Suggest has become more and more granular. In some major cities you can see different Suggestions from different parts of the city, and personalization also is playing a role.

When Suggest does shift between plural and singular terms, I assume that can have a serious impact for sites that aren't ranking well for both versions of the word.

[MrFewkes]

When I do keyword research for blue widgets - the external keyword tool always shows that the singular is the more popular version of the searched for string.

This is in the terms I have sought out anyway.

I seem to see the same pattern over and over again - people search for "blue widget" instead of "blue widgets".

Knowing this to be true - there are two possibilities that strike me most.

It is natural for the singular to show up more frequently because of its popularity over the plural, or, in my view less likely, they have over-ridden plurals where they are not naturally the most popular, with the singular.

[crobb305]

although not directly tied to search suggestions, I do see what seems to be a significantly increased ranking disparity between singular and plural forms. Several pages in my industry rank top 10 for either singular or plural, but page 5 or beyond for the other form. I have compared the various title/description/html/visible text and I can't find any real common connection. Maybe it's coming down to a filtering of excessive usage on page (beyond what is "expected" based on inbound links). Otherwise, I am just taking stabs in the dark. There definitely seems to be an uptick in phrase-based document scoring, which may feed back into the search suggestions as you are observing.