Inverted commas in search term

Does Google read the commas in the html?

[namniboose]

I have 2 mysteries to solve:

A site I am promoting (url is in my profile) comes up at # 2 for "keyword phrase" but #37 for keyword phrase (without inverted commas).

Any ideas as to why this site would do well with the inverted commas - is Google reading the inverted commas in the html code?

2nd question: this site comes up at #2 for the main keyword phrase on Google.de but #37 on Google.com...............why would that be?

Thanks for the insight.

Namniboose

[HitProf]

Hi Namniboose

The site may rank less without the inverted commas because other site do better on the seperate words but not on the exact phrase.

Don't know about Google.de: are there any German pages on the site?

[Susanne]

Question 1: "keyword phrase" brings back search results where the exact phrase is found, and where the two words are immediately next to each other.
Question 2: when you search using Google.de, which of the radio buttons is selected? If it is "Das Web" and your search is in English, then the results should be the same as far as I can see while searching for my sites. Cheers!

[namniboose]

Thanks HitProf and Susanne - that totally makes sense now about the inverted commas.

No, there isn't any German on the site and 'Das Web' is selected. #5 for the main keyword phrase whereas it is at #37 on Google.com

It has been like this for months so it can't be just because of freshbot and different servers.

Is this really unusual to have different results?

[HitProf]

Is the site perhaps hosted in Germany or otherwise 'connected' to Germany?

I have seen this type of differences in SERPS for Dutch owned .com and .biz sites, depending on which Google I use. G in Opera sometimes differs from Google.com and Google.nl but it's not always consistent.

[vitaplease]

There have been some differences between google.com and google.tld as of last september on tourism related search terms.

Cannot find the thread so quickly but could that be the case?

[namniboose]

No, the site is hosted in the US and there are no connections to Germany that I know of.

Actually the result is the same on all the European Google's that I have looked at (but Google.ca and Google.co.uk are the same as Google.com).

Any further ideas?

[Susanne]

namniboose,
It is possible that your keyword phrase contains a word that is identical in English and in German. Does the phrase also contain a location name? I speak German so you can sticky me the phrase and I'll have a look. Don't post it here, I think it's against TOS.

[Susanne]

namniboose,
Got your sticky, thanks. When I do the two searches, there are 30100 search results in Google.de, but 32000 in Google.com. It seems there are two different indexes? This must be part of the reason why SERPs differ.

You wrote in your sticky that part of the phrase is also used in other languages, which is true. If I remove the name of the location from your phrase I get 176000 results in Google.de but 3170000(!) in Google.com. I am very sure this is why your results differ. Cheers!

[namniboose]

Yes, it is evidently a different index but I still can't quite get my head around why the site does so much better on Euro Googles than Google.com

Something to do with the fact that the phrase is recognizable in all languages and the site does well for the whole phrase (inverted commas)?

[HitProf]

It's very interesting. Perhaps GoogleGuy knows? But this is not the Google forum :(