"of" is a very common word and was not included in your search

- or was it?

[ppg]

I have a page with the title "benefits of widgets"

If I search on google for "benefits of widgets" (no quotes), google tells me that the word "of" has not been included in my search. However, that same search brings back my page in the #1 slot. I search for "benefits widgets" (again no quotes) and the page is nowhere to be found (widgets in this instance is a very competitive word).

Sure enough, in the blue bar above the results, google tells me it searched for benefits of widgets.

I'm confused!

[jimbeetle]

I've always been confused about this but here's what I've concluded through my slim power of observation. All search examples are unquoted.

We know that Google, besides the keywords themselves, looks at the relative positioning of the keywords. In a search for "benefits widgets," pages with the words next to each other in the same order should rank higher than pages with the words "widgets benefits," then maybe "benefits word word word wigdets," etc.

When you search for "benefits of widgets" Google does not try to match the stop word "of" but does include it for the relative position of the keywords. In short, it searches for "benefits (some-word) widgets" and serves up results that match.

If you look closely at the SERPs, taking into account all of the other variables, you might be able to see this pattern.

Or I might be competely wrong.

Jim

[MHes]

Hi
IMHO

All to do with word proximity. Google ignores "of" but does take notice of a two letter word there.... so "benefits of widgets" will match 'benefits of widgets' if on your page, but not "benefits widgets" with no word seperating, unless that is also on your page.

Likewise, a search for "benefits of widgets" will probably bring up your page if you have "benefits in widgets"..... I guess?

[annej]

I find that 'of' or no 'of' makes a slight difference.
One of my best search phrases is 'history of widgets' so I check it a lot.

Anne

[ppg]

Ah! Another small piece of the jigsaw falls into place!

For the record, I did a bit of messing about based on your posts and I've found that the length of the word between "benefits" and "widgets" doesn't matter as long as its a stop word, so

benefits of widgets
benefits at widgets
benefits and widgets
benefits where widgets

all produce the same results, but:

benefits up widgets

produces very different results.

Thanks for clarifying that for me!

[daamsie]

does this tendency to treat stopwords as a space mean that webmasters should go for more 'search friendly' titles?

ie.. call it
widgets usa, instead of
widgets in usa

Search trends suggest that users are much more likely to search for widgets usa then widgets in usa..

This to me makes it encouraging to write user-unfriendly titles... wouldn't it be nicer to reward those who create nicer titles by not penalizing them for it? Just ignoring the stopwords completely would be a better solution.. ie. when someone has a title called 'widgets in usa', this would register in google as being 10 characters (not 12) and would be searched as 'widgets usa', putting it on a level playing field with the uglier titles out there.

[MHes]

ppg

Nice one, that is interesting.

[ppg]

wouldn't it be nicer to reward those who create nicer titles by not penalizing them for it?

Interesting point.
If I understand you right, your saying that "benefits of widgets" is a nicer page title than "benefits widgets" and I shouldn't be penalised for using it?

I think there is another side to that coin though:

In the case of this search, widgets (a technology not a product) is a very competitive term, I doubt if I would have been able to get the page in question ranked well for "benefits widgets". "benefits stop-word widgets" I can do alright with, so the way I'm looking at it is that some traffic to that page on the less used search is better than none at all on the more competitive one.
Rather than feeling penalised, in a way I've been given an opportunuty to rank the page which I wouldn't otherwise have had.

Although both searches return the same number of results, "benefits widgets" returns a lot of high PR pages in the first couple of pages of results which I can't compete with, for "benefits of widgets" I got the #1 slot. I'm not sure if this will be useful to anyone. I guess my logs for this month will tell the real story.

[Fiver]

had a decent discussion about this a while ago... never quite been satisfied with the findings though..

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