No more "How do I?" queries in Google

Just noticed that G is filtering "Questions"

[martinibuster]

I remember it's been said that seeding questions into your website was a good idea. You know like, "How do I fix a broken hard drive?" was a good way to fish for people who needed a new hard drive, that kind of thing.

Well, I just did a search and it turns out that "how do i" are stop words. If this is new, well, it's going to shoot down a lot of sites.

If it's been going on for awhile- well I guess I'll turn the lights off 'cuz everybody must've left the room.

My question: Anybody know how long this has been going on?

[TheDave]

I think how, do and I have been ommitted from searches for a long time. If you want to search for a "how do I", you can still do it with quotes, ie "how do I .....", which I do find useful at times.

[Net_Wizard]

Yes they are stop words, like 'where can I...' types of queries. However, although these are supposedly filtered...

compare the results between say "How do I fix a broken blue widget?" to the results of "fix broken blue widget". There's a slight difference in ranking.

What does it means? If your site is already ranking well for "fix broken blue widget" say at #8, you get a slight instant boost when somebody actually uses the query "How do I fix a broken blue widget?" say at #4

Cheers

[martinibuster]

Well, I'm thinking that they may not have been stop words a few years ago-

Or it may have been an urban legend optimization thing I picked up on the street.