JNB Web Promotion Internet Marketing and SEO Newsletter

by Ramon Uy  October 30, 2007 edition:

 "Stop" words. They do make a difference to Google!

For the search phrase 'SEO and newsletter' a site comes out #7 (Google is #1). This is the page title and H1 tag.

Google tells though: "The "AND" operator is unnecessary". But if omit the 'and' I enter 'advice tips on SEO', a site drops to #3.

Further, if you drop the 'on' (what I would consider another stop word), my site drops to #25.

In MSN Live Search my site remains at #11 with all 3 variants.

So:
1) Google does appear to be influenced by 'stop words.

and more importantly:
2) What would normal humans enter in google: 'advice and tips on SEO' or 'advice tips seo'?

My tip to this is: To would enter a sentence into Google. That is how I search, not by entering random keywords, unless I started with searching for just "SEO" and then was trying to hone in on something. I think most people would do the same.