Comments on: Human Behaviour in Search – plural vs. singular matters

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:34:48 +0000

This is really interesting research. You don’t realize how big of a difference it can be in traffic between singular and plural. The good thing is that for less competitive keywords, you can usually rank pretty closely for both the plural and single version.

By: Luke

Luke — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:54:01 +0000

To be honest I’ve got no idea why the results vary. The first problem in coming up with a hypotheses is that we don’t know how accurate the google counts are. I would be interested to see some research on this topic though.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:11:59 +0000

Those are pretty interesting results. Thinking it about it here, I’m not sure I can pinpoint why the U.S. search results would be different than other English-speaking countries. Any hypothesis?

In any event, I think it’s wise to use Google Keywords before you get started to understand what the predominant term is.

By: Google Home Business Kit

Google Home Business Kit — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:24:02 +0000

This is not only important in the adwords arena, but also in organic search. I’ve been able to SEO for plural terms alot easier than singular terms. The problem with doing that however is that the traffic rates on plural terms is usually less than that of the single verb or noun.

This is something you’ll need to take into account when doing adwords advertising and organic SEO.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:12:22 +0000

This is really very important if one is going to work on adwords otherwise it would be just a waste of time with no results. I was really thinking about a adword campaign and I got to be careful on what I choose for the keyword after reading this, thanks for sharing your experince.

By: Luke

Luke — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:08:00 +0000

Jessica, thanks for sharing. That’s another great example

By: Jessica Baul

Jessica Baul — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:54:45 +0000

I had a problem with my PPC campaign where the plural word got more searches, but the singular of the word actually converted the best. It was so weird because it was counter-intuitive for the keyword I was promoting on. I’m so glad that I had tracking in place because I would have never caught this otherwise. Maybe you should also do a study on keyword conversion as it relates to plurality.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:18:29 +0000

I find that users tend to make their keyword searches plural becuase in their mind they are expecting multiple results. Of course this does not apply to searches based on questions such as “How to ….”.

By: Lukevdp

Lukevdp — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:48:59 +0000

@Michael agreed =) thanks for coming and commenting.

@GoogleBusinessKit yeah, though I think what these examples show is that each keyword people search differently, and like Michael says, its a lot based on intent.

Thanks for the comments everyone

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