Search Query Keyword Order

Different relevancy for each word?

[achronic]

Does Google put different relevance on each word in a
query? For instance, blue widgets and widgets blue in my opinion should return the same results, however that isn't how it works. It seems to put more relevance on the first word in the query.

Keep in mind I haven't had time to test this extensively. With that assumption, using an adjective will put more emphasis on it and the results will suffer. Comments?

[ciml]

Google store the position of words in a document.

When you search for blue widgets, this allows them to give more weight to a page with "blue widgets" than a page with "blue" and "widgets" in different parts of the document. Also, it lets them give more weight to a page with "blue widgets" than a page with "widgets blue".

Having a default proximity weighting was one of the things that made Google's results different from (and I would say better than) other engines.