John Mueller answered a question about why a site that ranked for a single keyword wouldn’t rank for what they said was a synonym for the same phrase. John answered the question in general terms, showing how important the full context of the search query is.
Synonyms and search results
Prior to Google Hummingbird, Google generally ranked sites by matching keywords in a search query to keywords on a web page.
After updating Google Hummingbird, Google replaced some of the important words in the query with synonyms without actually changing the meaning of the search query. The advantage of doing this was that Google could now find more web pages to rank, some of which were better than pages with exact keyword matches.
This technique is called Expand the query.
Google today does more than just expand the query in order to rank web pages and as Muller’s answer shows, some of that generally focuses on what users mean when they use a search query in order to understand the full context of the search query.
The person asking the question was confused because they expected that a page that had categorized for one key phrase would be ordered to issue a synonym for that phrase. But it didn’t rank for that alternate phrase and they wanted to know why.
Small differences in words affect rankings
This is the question that was asked:
“Why might there be slight differences in synonyms or such terms that make such a big difference in ranking position?”
The person asking the question gave an example of a page that ranked for the keyword, “video editing” but did not rank for the query “video editor”.
“Video editing” could be about one thing and “video editor” could be about another and this is how John answered the question.
How does Google Search actually rank these two sentences?
However, Google’s actual search results treat relatively the same keywords and show results for video editors, only some sites that rank in one search result do not rank in the other, while some sites rank in both.
The difference in the above specific phrases is explained by the fact that “video editing” is not a direct synonym for “video editor” even though Google returns somewhat similar results.
The reason they are different is that “modify video” is ambiguous and there is an inherent “how” component to the search term (“modify video”) that may skew search results in favor of specific sites ranking for that term.
For example, the top result for the ambiguous phrase has seven how-to steps on a web page, while the People Ask (PAA) feature shows “how do I” search queries as similar, while the search results for the other phrase are not as good in a feature PAA.
Although John didn’t address the specific nuances above, his answer is still 100% correct and applicable to the specific even though he was answering the question in general terms.
The full context of the search query
John Mueller replied:
“So from our point of view, this can be quite normal and this is something that we’re trying to do in terms of understanding things like synonyms in a query.
But we’re also trying to look at… the full context of the query.
And especially when it comes to synonyms, we might assume that something is mostly synonymous, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely synonymous.”
John makes an important point about synonyms and search terms.
Given the whole context of the search query, it may mean that replacing a word with its synonym will not work because the replacement will change the meaning of the search query.
User expectations and search query context
John Mueller then extends the idea of search query context to consider what a user might mean when using a search query and how this might affect whether it is appropriate to extend the search query with a synonym.
John explains:
And especially when you look at something like Video Editing vs. Video Editor, expectations on the user’s side are a little different.
On the one hand you want to edit a video. On the other hand, you may want to download a video editor.
And it looks very similar but… the things users want are a little different.
So from my point of view, it makes sense to show different ratings there.
And we have the same thing with things like slightly different word spellings, like if you have the British or American version of an English word; If you have a word or letter with an accent and no accent, we understand that these two letters are often the same.
But we also understand that they are slightly different.
And we try to display search results with that kind of consideration.”
Synonyms and keywords
John’s tip is great for keyword research, too.
A popular approach is to pick the keywords that get the most traffic and write articles about those keywords even though the site isn’t exactly about those keywords. So there is a mismatch between the keywords in the title tag and in the title elements.
the quote
How does google use synonyms in search
Watch the video at 39:35, Mark
