Phrase searches are an important metric, but have their limitations.
When domainers try to determine the popularity of keywords in their domain names, they usually find the number of phrase match results at Google. To find this, you just search with “quotes around your keywords”. That tells Google to return results with the actual phrase inside your quotes, in the actual order.
This matters for domains because order matters. Consider the domain name GameFootball.com. You could say this term has 60 million results on Google, but that’s when you search without quotes because Google doesn’t care about the order of your search terms. Using quotes, you get less than a million results, which is a better indicator of popularity of the term and therefore the domain (as compared to FootballGame.com, a much better domain).
But when it comes to search engine optimization, remember this truth: hardly anyone searches with quotes. I suspect many readers of Domain Name Wire do, but DNW readers are web savvy. The typical web surfer doesn’t even know about using quotes when searching.
Why does this matter? When you’re tracking your rankings, you should search without quotes. I was reminded of this today when reviewing analytics for one of my web sites. I was getting a lot of traffic from phrases and checked my rankings on Google using quotes. I couldn’t find my site — until I dropped the quotes and found myself in the first few positions.
So remember: searching with quotes has important uses, but most searchers don’t use them.
Ace says
Thanks for this tip, somehow I was always using “quotes” to see the number of results.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Ace – if you’re looking at a domain’s keyword occurrence rate, you should still use quotes.
Belmassio says
How would you know if people use quotes or not?
I’ve actually seen people I know use quotes, and they are regular, non-techie, folks.
Ms Domainer says
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I always use quotes in my searches, even for non-domaining subjects.
I get better and more relevant results.
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M. Menius says
Searching in quotes also provides a more accurate list of Google advertisers (along the top and right margin) who are advertising under that exact search phrase.
This can produce a list of companies (or websites) who may have a special interest in your exact match domain name.
Easy E says
All good points.
I have found quotes to be one of the first things “taught” to a new search engine user. Consider that some years ago most search engines required boolean operators (many government search engines still do for multiple keywords), a large segment of the population has been exposed to simple methods for refining searches. They teach it in schools and computer classes.
Does my grandma search with quotes? Maybe not. I’d bet my non-techie parents do.
Andrew Allemann says
I had an interesting experience the other day. I went to visit one of my Lakeway.com advertisers. She wanted to see where should could view stats for her listing, so she sat down at the computer. What happened next amazed me:
1. Opened browser
2. Typed “Lakeway.com” into the browser’s default welcome page search (firefox)
3. In Google results, clicked the top link (my site)
Really opened my eyes.
Louise says
Your site turns up Google search #4 for Lakeway by itself, without quotes, after the map. Not too shabby! Congratulations! Those are the kind of results you want, when people type in the name by itself. 🙂
Shahram says
ive been using quotes in searches long before domaining. But andrew i feel you on how dumb people are that use the search bar for the address bar. Drives me nuts.
Stephen Douglas says
Dub-A, when I posted my blog article on 1/15 showing some nice domains for $99, I gave them more description, including that I NOTED the fact that the Google search results for each domain were based on “quoted searches”, which is the only way to determine the correct page results for the breakdown of your domain.
Using quotes in domain searches should be standard with all domainers. A lot of noobies or scammers, will print the domain phrase word results on an unquoted search, which is inaccurate because it returns EVERY page result with at least one of the words in the domain phrase. Pumps up the “google results”, but it’s misleading and can be fraudulent.
Always search up domain phrases in quotes. Lots more tricks, but I save those for my paying consulting clients!.
cheers!
Andrew Allemann says
Again, when it comes to figuring out the phrase popularity, use quotes.
When it comes to checking your search positions, don’t use quotes.
Mike - domainimal.com says
little known to most, Google (as well as Yahoo and Bing) stops counting at 1,000 results, as I demonstrate here:
http://www.domainimal.com/blog/testing-the-limits-of-google.html
many times you may also get a results for a search term in quotes that maybe displays 1 of 50,000 results but in reality if you keep scrolling through the results pages they may stop at page 15 or 16 meaning all those results are a lot of duplicate content
the point of your post is still correct. but in terms of SEO i have noticed in the last year or so that google seems to be attempting to deprecate the search with quotes. by that i mean that more and more i notice searches without quotes display almost the same results (sometimes exactly the same)as searches with quotes, at least for the first page ranking.
i used to search w/ quotes religiously to filter down to the most relevant content but it doesnt seem as necessary these days and in some cases is almost redundant
Stephen Douglas says
Hi Mike,
As told to me, by someone who is considered the BEST in understanding SE’s and such (whose name will go unmentioned), Google doesn’t STOP searching or indexing at 1000, they stop LISTING past 1000 or less, especially if the results are similar.
They provide the total count of the phrase/word you’re searching for, but don’t provide listing anything past 1000 results because of relevancy (meaning you should find what you need in the first 1000 page results).
Not sure about Yahoo and Bing. He showed me how it worked, and proved it.
Mike - domainimal.com says
Stephen, thanks for that point of clarification. I would agree. When I said ‘stops counting’ that was probably the wrong way to put it.
Stephen Douglas says
@Hi Mike,
No problem. You still know way more than I do about SE’s and all that…