Keyword density & word variations

Google sees widget, widgets etc. as being the same on some terms?

[lazycat]

I thought my keyword density was fine until the last few weeks I noticed one page crash out of the index. On some searches it simply does not show up, on others, it is ranked very lowly even when including the name of my own site into the search terms!

I figured I'd leave it alone and see what happened but nothing changed...so, I have a question about keyword density and word variations.

Lets say I have a keyword "widget".

I do a search for widget or keyword + widget etc.

Google displays results and highlights in bold these terms from page titles and snippets:

widget, widgets, widgeting, widgeter, widgeters...

I have all those terms on my page.

For widget density is around 8%, for widgets 6%, for widgeter 6% etc.

Now, by themselves these densities are fine but put together they are going to be very high.

My question is, if google is highlighting all variations of the keyphrase when you do a search, is it safe to assume they are considering all those terms as being the same word/phrase on the page and thus whacking my keyword density sky high and causing my page to drop as drastically as it has? This page has gone from top five to complete obscurity for no other apparent reason.

Does anyone have experience or thoughts on this?

[Collieman]

I have heard of the reverse happening. Where people have shown that successful sites have higher incidence of stemming.
So G is picking up stemming...and over stemming must therefore penalise?

[Collieman]

I have heard of the reverse happening. Where people have shown that successful sites have higher incidence of stemming.
So G is picking up stemming...and over stemming must therefore penalise?