What's the difference?

[coldfused]

Can someone explain to me what would be the difference in these two phrases:

"web design in tampa" vs "tampa web design"


One is a page 1 result and the other a page 6 on google. Why does the word "in" have such a different effect on the result? Same page, same title, keywords, copy and anchors?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Carl

[noob_0001]

First of all web design is firs in one and last in the other - other words lower promix in the second.. The more a word shows toward the front the more value it has.

[SVB]

Something similar which I do not understand.
According to Google, it ommits certain small words from results, such as "in".
Therefore, a search for 'web design' should return the same results as a search for 'web in design' (minus the quotations). But it doesn't. Why is this?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=web+design&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...n+design&meta=

[coldfused]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Stephen you are correct, Google clearly states it ommits these words but the results are obviously different.

And noob if what you say is true how do I determine from my targeted phrases and copy how to correct the problem? As I stated above my the results are clearly different but the page content for both results are the same.

The page 6 is my targeted phrase but the page 1 is the "luckier" of the two. Of course I want to switch the results of google querys but have no idea where to start because im not sure what makes one work better than the other?

[noob_0001]

"web design in tampa" vs "tampa web design"

Your answer:

Moving your important terms or phrases to the front of the paragraph and higher up on the page.

In the first term, web is in 1st position; in the second, it is second term. In the first term, Tampa is 4th; and in the second term, Tampa is first. The first word will have a value of 100, design is 75, in is 50 and the fourth word will have a value of 25 in the first term. In the Second term, Tampa has a value of 100 and web has a value of 66 and design has a value of 33.. In the first web design has a value of 175, and in the second term it has a value of 100.

I hope that this simplified example helps you.

[coldfused]

Makes sense,

Thanks again.

[SVB]

I still do not believe it has anything to do with the order of the words.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...+design+&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...esign+in&meta=

Web is first in both searches
Design is second in both searches
Google clearly states that "in" is a very common word and was not included in your search. So therefore in my mind, both searches SHOULD be exactly the same.
Why are the results different then? I really want to know. Can someone who actually knows please explain?

[coldfused]

Yeh Stephen I guess I should have tested Noobs theory, it was late so I was on my way to bed.

Still doesnt add up. Here is a answer from another forum I got:

Google is better at turning the words around these days than it used to be. So, if a page targets "web design in tampa", it will usually do ok for "tampa web design".

What happens is that Google first gets a results set for the searchterm of about 40,000 pages. The results set includes pages that match the words in any order as well as the words in the searchterm order. Then it ranks the pages according to certain criteria, which includes matching the searchterm words with the words on the page. Naturally, pages that have exactly matching words score points for exactly matching the searchterm. That's why the "turned round" results are different to the "right way round" results.

It's similar with stop words. Google drops stop words from the searchterm when compiling the results set, but when the pages in the set are ranked, they are included, and if a page has the exact phrase on it, including the stop words, it scores more points than a page that doesn't. That's why you see results where Google states that certain words were not included in the search, but the pages at the top of the results include them, and they are bolded.

[DebbieV]

Originally Posted by Stephen Bradley

Something similar which I do not understand.
According to Google, it ommits certain small words from results, such as "in".
Therefore, a search for 'web design' should return the same results as a search for 'web in design' (minus the quotations). But it doesn't. Why is this?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=web+design&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...n+design&meta=

Google does ignore the actual text "in" when searching, but identifies and counts "in" as a stop_word. This does affect word order/proximity of the remaining words in the phrase.

In your examples above you are seaching for two separate "phrases"

web design = web+design
web in design = web+any_stop_word+design

Substituting "in" with any of the other known stop words will return identical results. We can see that the word is ignored but "counted" as a stop_word:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...e+design&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...n+design&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...r+design&meta=
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...w+design&meta=

Look at the cached version of some of the pages and you'll see that the stop_word is not highlighted (ignored).

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta= check the cached page for the first result.
http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache...t+design&hl=en

Close to the bottom of the page there is and "About the Site" heading. You'll notice that the word "about" is not highlighted on the cached page.

[coldfused]

Great info Debbie.


Thanks,
Carl

[longcall911]

I would think that anchor text also plays a significant role in the difference between the two sets of results.