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SUMMARY (long message): Except I think Google has one major fault. The differences between Singular and Plural search engine results. They vary so much. The sites are completely different and on a review site where you cover a product, it is rare to use the plural version of the product type, so the review sites (who are the most objective and should rank high) rank terribly for the fairly popular plural version of the search term. However my site, including my competition review sites, have hundreds or thousands of pages that mention the singular version, so I think we count as being Plural, but we never show up in the Plural SERPS. I think Google needs to address this problem and I'm wondering if any one else runs into this problem.
I run a product review site. I rank almost always in the top one or two spot for the search for that product type, singular. However, for the plural version I can't find a single page for my site in the 10 first SERP pages. We have over 130 reviews of this product. So in a sense we are the plural version, it just it grammatically incorrect and makes no sense to use the plural version on our site very often.
In almost any search with the singular version related to this product category we can be found, usually on the first page. We have 1,840 pages in Google and I guarantee you each one mentions the singular version of the product category at least once. With this much content you could say that we have enough to be plural, i.e. there are multiple pages and on-topic quality content for the product name. We (product type)s. So, I think our site should rank in the plural version of the SERP.
Obviously, I care about this issue because it effects my traffic because people to search for the plural version. However, in comparing the SERPs for the singular and plural search NONE of the sites are the same. For the singular, it's very quality results. 8 of the 10 are review / objective web sites that cover this product, and one of those 8 is just a very popular site dedicated to one specific model of this product type. These are objective web sites that are going to give the user quality information (except the guy above me :-) we'll that is partially true because their content you have to pay for, but that's for another post) However, the SERPS for the plural version are terrible.
If I do searches for other products (where the plural and singular don't mean totally different things, like travel and travels are really different - so they wouldn't work), I get the same problem. The same is true for many other products. The SERPS for Palm and Palms vary a ton (maybe a bad example because of Palm reading). Same thing is true for Game and Games.
What I'm basically saying is that I think if a web site has a lot of pages for the singular version of a word, they should rank high for the plural version. Because they are plural of that word because they have many of the singular. I think I could fix the problem by making my content grammatically incorrect and using the plural more often but that just doesn't make sense and seems unethical.
I think Google needs to take a look at this problem in the algorithm and see if anything can be done to fix it.
Also does anyone else see this problem?
Robin
Also from a searcher's point of view, I would rather control the pluralization myself. Not to mention the fact that the LANGUAGE of the search would then have to be implicitly or explicitly specified.
I am not sure it's Google's biggest problem, but they should offer an option:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Altavista Prisma offers a pre-categorisation, which sometimes offers single and plural versions.
Google should offer this type of a pre-categorisation as an opt in for their SERPs.
EXCELLENT point! If I enter a single word search into Google, how does Google know that it is an English language search, and I am entering a English language word pluralized with an "s"? I could be using a foreign language word, or perhaps just some acronym that isn't a word at all. By removing the "s", Google could be searching for one thing, while I am searching for something completely different.
There are just too many instances where pluralization completely changes the context and meaning of the search.
Art / Arts
Football / Footballs
Personal / Personals
Classified / Classifieds
Just a few examples to illustrate how singular and plural versions of a word can have dramatically different meanings.
as / ass
(sorry)
Likewise folding of spelling variants: eg organisation and organization.
google should consider adding options for these to the search page; by default I think the folding should be ON.
If you conside keyword1 and keyword2 and their plural with an "s", if the users is searching as
keyword1 keyword2
keyword1 keyword2(s)
keyword1(s) keyword2
keyword1(s) keyword2(s)
keyword2 keyword1
keyword2 keyword1(s)
keyword2(s) keyword1
keyword2(s) keyword1(s)
...will all by and large give different results, then if you try with "at" or "in" (the words Google claims to ignore) you get different results again.
Personally I believe we are better off with the present system, and with a bit of knowledge you can tweek your site optimisation to cover the plurals, and as others have said, that gives you an advantage of the guys that don't!
athletics supporter
work out the different singular/plural combos and they have a wide range of different meanings,
cornwall is bang on and i would add that the missing apostrophe is also in the mix but that the other words in the search phrase give the context.
eg: childrens
is used to mean:
children (plural)
children's
childrens'
in all it gives you an edge if you work your pages to include all the variants, so from a pro point of view it is a good thing.
the missing apostrophe
Very true. Ironically I came across an example when checking a site of my own today.
"name-of-town's hotel" gives way different results to "name-of-town hotel"
In the end you have to work out in order what you think people are looking for exactly.
If you are late into a field, you can still get good traffic by covering off the 2 or 3 word searches, that your higher ranked competitors have ignored (usually cos they have never had to target them)
Works like a charm! If searching for either (in my region), my site comes up first for both.
I agree that it can be a troublesome problem, but it can be overcome using anchor text in links, reasonable alt tags, headings, on page text, etc.
I find I do best on 'widgeting'. Since I don't sell 'widgets' but books on the history of 'widgeting' it really does make a difference to optomize for the ing version.
When you think about it 'widget' or 'widgets' implies the product while 'widgeting' implies the making of the product.
Anne
"Would you like a piece of Jelly Bean Cake made with only green Jelly Beans".
-s-
However, it is also true that for my search terms and the search terms I listed in the original post and probably for thousands of more search terms. Either the plural or the singular keyword search contains quality web sites which aren't selling you the product you're searching for (i.e. review sites, discussion boards) whereas the other contains a bunch of less useful web sites. So I am concerned about what the user gets, because I believe in my case that what the user gets (even if you take my site out of the rankings) is way better for the singular version than it is for the plural version.
Your argument makes no sense that they count the pages on a subject to make it plural. It would have to be one way or the other. singular == plural, or singular!= plural.
Now if you want singular == plural, do you want the serps to be exacly the same for both? or would you like the SERPs to be better for the sites that got it right?
I would suggest that you try and figure out ways to get those plurals onto the page in ways that don't make you look illiterate. I run a review site and we don't have any problems in this reguard. Like Liane said, there are ways to improve your page without making the changes on the page!
The subdirectories that hold your review pages could have the plural in them www.widgetreview.com/reviews-of-widgets/review.html
gives you both singular and plural of both reviews and widgets. It really doesn't take much creativity to come up with some text that refers to an item in it's plural.
Oh yes, I am very much against your suggestion. I like the fact that I can get a different set of still relevant results, by just changeing one of the words to plural.
Remember, the surfer and Google do not care if they find your site, they just want to find "a relevant site". If you want to be relevant, it is up to you to figure out how to do that.
I'll bite on this one....
we come up no1 on the singular version our keywords, but end up no 11 on the plural version. Both are in the context and in the text links as well as in the meta tags. The pluralization of our keywords does not change their meaning. I haven't quite fiqured out why?
This one is easy. They are different words with different competition.
On my site some people were concerned by the difference between our "reports", and our "reviews" in the serps. All the reports had "reviews" in their title and pathname. But we got way better results when searching on "widget report" than "widget review". The problem was, that we had no competition for the reports, whereas we had a lot for reviews. You just have more competition for the plurals.
