Stemming - one way stemming causes problems

[akreider]

Google seems to use what I'll call "one-way" stemming. For instance, you can have ~keyword1 show keyword2 in the results, but ~keyword2 won't show keyword1.

So if I have my website optimized for keyword1, which stems into keyword2, then does this help me if people are searching for keyword2? Or does it not help me because keyword2 doesn't stem into keyword1? My guess it that it doesn't help me, as my SERPs are really bad for keyword2.

Note: I know that the Google knowledge base says that Google doesn't do stemming. But perhaps this is wrong, because when I search for a certain two-word term (politically related) it comes up with results for another two word term in bold.

[Marcia]

Google just recently changed their info to reflect that they're using stemming.

About one-way stemming, are you looking at only one word searches?

What are you seeing with two word searches (or 3), like what's highlighted either in the cache with yellow highlight on words, or in the bold highlighting that you see on the results pages themselves?

For two word searches, have you noticed anything about the highlighting when the words in the phrase are used together or separately?

Oh, and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[kevin1023]

What is the difference if they are seperate veruses together?