So called 'Stop Words' can cause search results to be wrongly understood

[trader]

I thought I would also post this here since the old thread was 3 pages long and it seems the longer it gets the less viewed it likely becomes. This is important as many are not aware of this issue.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by domaindirk
www.SoftwareBy.com - Keywords "Software By" = 1+Mil
www.SongLyricsBy.com - Keywords "Song Lyrics By" = 1+Mil
www.HealthBy.com - Keywords "Health By" = 2+Mil
www.WallpaperBy.com - Keywords "Wallpaper By" = 2+Mil
www.OnCheat.com - Keywords "On Cheat" = 2+Mil
www.OnDodge.com - Keywords "On Dodge" = 300K+
www.OnDriver.com - Keywords "On Driver" = 500K+
www.OnDollar.com - Keywords "On Dollar" = 100K+
www.OnGM.com - Keywords "On GM" = 100K+
www.OnOwner.com - Keywords "On Owner" = 250K+
www.OnPart.com - Keywords "On Part" = 500K+
www.OnSeafood.com - Keywords "On Seafood" = 100K+
www.OnStereo.com - Keywords "On Stereo" = 300K+
www.OnVirus.com - Keywords "On Virus" = 1+Mil
www.PicturesBy.com - Keywords Pictures By" = 3+Mil
www.Morph.TV - Keyword "Morph" 16,000 direct matches
www.RecipesBy.com - Keywords "Recipes By" = 2+Mil
www.Morpheus.CD - Keyword "Morpheus" = 1+Mil
www.God.CD - Keyword "God" = 61,699 direct matches
www.FDIC.CD - Keyword "FDIC" = 18,503 direct matches
www.USAF.TV - Keyword "USAF" = 16,006 direct matches
www.DVDby.com - Keywords "DVD By" = 1+Mil
www.DictionaryBy.com - Keywords "Dictionary By" = 2+Mil
www.DrBy.com - Keywords "Dr By" = 100K+
www.ClipArtBy.com - Keywords "ClipArt By" = 2+Mil
Thanks, DD [/b]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reason so many of these have high returns is they are using so called "stop words" as part of the name. Search engines and Overture ignore stop words to speed up searches and save resources.

Some stop words are common words like 'on' 'by' 'a' 'the' 'an' 'in' 'and' plus a number of others. Thus, the returns are the same if searching for 'on driver' or 'driver.' All you are doing is seeing the results for the popular non-stop word.

This oddity should not confuse domain buyers but I think it does, especially novices and newbies. I think Snoopy was also trying to make this point in his post.

You can do a search on Google for "stop words" and you will find many webpages explaining it and other common stop words.

As a side note, it might be a good idea to use as few stop-words as possible on your webpage as the SE's may stop indexing when they hit them. However, not positive if correct or not, though it's rumored to be so.

[domaindirk]

I agree "real", although when I linked the "on" and "by" domains to my website, the traffic counter picked up quite a bit. Thanks for the input.

DD

[trader]

Originally posted by domaindirk I agree "real", although when I linked the "on" and "by" domains to my website, the traffic counter picked up quite a bit. Thanks for the input. DD

Thanks for your feeback. It's interesting about your traffic picking up with the stop words used.

I have always suspected that was possible but never had any evidence it has an effect.

Perhaps a domain like www.AndCasino.com would get traffic from surfers looking for Casino.com since the 'and' stop word is ignored by the SE.

Anyone here know if this is possible? If it is, the stop word names and web-sites would be much more valuable.