plurals and order

charlie · Jan 20, 2006

I know we've had this before and if someone can find the older thread post a link but i was wondering what people think about and the SEO / technical implications of plurals and 's' are on a domain name?

I notice that overture removes the s automatically in its searches which is annoying because if it didn't i could answer the question myself

I know in some cases this will make the world of difference
new.co.uk
news.co.uk

but what about

finewine.co.uk
finewines.co.uk

and perhaps more importantly

boatgear.co.uk
boatsgear.co.uk

in this example to you and me this isnt great english and the boatgear names is far more desirable but does it make any difference to a search engine?

also while we're on the subject what difference does the order make does

boatgear.co.uk

the same as

gearboat.co.uk

if a search engine identifies them differently how much impact could this have on you SEO ranking?

anythoughts appreciated

olebean · Jan 20, 2006

FineWines to me is far better than finewine after all 2 bottles are better than one.

Seriously, there are always exceptions to the rule when dealing with plurals.

knickers in far better than knicker
briefs again is better then brief

etc etc

As for search engines, I have noted that in some cases they knock of the "s" when searching in the singular and the plural site is ranked highest. Whether or not this worksin reverse I have no idea as with the example briefs means something totally different to brief.

Quickly looking at google, I note that the academic term has prioritised over colloquial language. This I can only assume means providing there are no academic alternatives plural ranking in given similar rating as singular

I would be interest in seeing the mathematical analysis for ranking (like most probably)

aqls · Jan 20, 2006

Some analysis on your words and on some that I have a prior interest in:

Using the following:
shredders
shredder
paper shredder
paper shredders
guillotines
guillotine
blank dvd
blank dvds
fax machine
fax machines
fine wine
fine wines
boat gear
boats gear
new
news

Google search
Number of pages listed by google for each of these terms but not the other
i.e. "search term" -"search terms" in google
"boat gear" -"boats gear" - 55,600
"boats gear" -"boat gear"- 40,100

"boat gear" -"boat gears" - 56,600
"boat gears" -"boat gear" - 930

"boatgear" -"boatsgear" - 433
"boatsgear" -"boatgear" - 372
Note: Quality of traffic differences - typical example
boatsgear is the name of a message board
boatgear is used usually meaning boat gear

"shredder" -shredders - 2,350,000
"shredders" -shredder - 2,380,000

"paper shredders" -"paper shredder" - 1,280,000
"paper shredder" -"paper shredders" - 888,000

"blank dvd" -"blank dvds" - 3,190,000
"blank dvds" -"blank dvd" - 292,000

"guillotines" -"guillotine"- 359,000
"guillotine" -"guillotines" - 1,800,000

"fine wine" -"fine wines" - 1,780,000
"fine wines" -"fine wine" - 1,930,000

"fax machine" -"fax machines" - 3,160,000
"fax machines" -"fax machine" - 5,340,000

"new" -"news" - 2,430,000,000
"news" -"new" - 1,580,000,000

"tables" -"table" - 121,000,000
"table" -"tables" - 500,000,000

You will notice from this that there is
a) no fixed rule about plurals in terms of popularity of pages
b) alot of statistical confusion added to any research mix i.e. the message board boatsgear really screws up the generic term analysis and there are many different contextual interpretations of many of the words e.g. guillotine

In summary, there were more plural pages for:
news against new
fine wines against fine wine
fax machines against fax machine
paper shredders against paper shredder
shredders against shredder

there were more singular pages for:
blank dvd against blank dvds
boat gear against boat gears
guillotine against guillotines
table against tables

Now looking at searches - i.e. the other side of the equation
Overture
Overture sometimes keeps the plural separate, but I don't know how reliable this is - e.g. guillotines and guillotine gave separate results.

shredder - 39,429
shredders same result as singular

paper shredder - 29,657
paper shredders - same

guillotines - 15,663
guillotine - 624

blank dvd - 716,411
blank dvds - same

fax machine - 63,469
fax machines - same

fine wine - 5039
fine wines - same

boat gear - 133
boats gear - same

new - 115,720
news - 689,430

Tip:
Sometimes we can get a clue from derived results where OV are likely to have differentiated the plural e.g.
shredders.com - 27
shredder.com - 32

Using Word Tracker, we can get an idea of difference between plurals and singular.

Again on some terms I don't believe it is reliable e.g.I don't believe that the search numbers for fax machine and fax machines were identical, on others I think we can use it with a certain confidence in terms of relative strength rather than as absolutes:

WordTracker
Keyword (?) - - - Count (?) -- Predict (?)
shredder - - -- - - 403 - - - - - 469
shredders - - - - - 350 - - - - - 407

blank dvds - - - - - 77 - - - - - 90
blank dvd - - - - - 167 - - - - - 194

fine wine - - - -- - 64 - - - - -- 74
fine wines - - - - - 55 - - - - -- 64

boats gear - no results from dogpile or metacrawler
boat racing gear - - 5 - - - - - 6
boat gears - - - - - 2 - - - - - 2

guillotine - - - - - 1781 - - - 2071
guillotines - - - - - 97 - - - - 113

fax machine - - - 325 - - - - - 378
fax machines - - - 325 - - - - - 378

table - - - - - - - 1248 - - -- - 1451
tables - - - - - - 1128 - - - - - 1312

Comparing the only result we got from Overture (guillotine vs guillotines):
Both show that plural is hugely less popular than singular.
97 / 1781 = 0.054 = 5.4%
624 / 15,663 = 0.039 = 3.98%
So while there is a variance between the two measures, it is within some bounds of believability.

Google adwords
Now looking at another measure of these words, specifically using the Keyword estimates in Google adwords the results are as follows:
Keyword - - - - - Impr.

shredders - - - - - 168
shredder - - - - - - 109

paper shredder - - - 93
paper shredders - -- 95

guillotines - - - - - 18
guillotine - - - -- - 98

blank dvd - - - - - 100
blank dvds - - - - - 79

fax machine - - - -- 84
fax machines - - - - 205

table - - - - - - - - 121
tables - - - - - -- - 176

fine wine - - - - - < 0.1
fine wines - - - - - 1.2

finewine - - - - - < 0.1
finewines - - - - - < 0.1

new - - - - - - - - - 2.9
news - - - - - - - -- 63.0

Which shows that for instance the number of searches for fine wines exceeds the number of searches for fine wine by a factor of over 10 times.

There was not enough information to show any differences with boatgear and boatsgear, boat gear however showed traffic prediction whereas boats gear did not
nor did boat gears.

So higher numbers of searches in google for plural against singular is true for:
news against new
fine wines against fine wine
tables against table
fax machines against fax machine
paper shredders against paper shredder
shredders against shredder

higher number of searches in google for singular against plural is true for:
blank dvd against blank dvds
guillotine against guillotines
boat gear against boat gears

Compare this result to the first search which was the number of pages existing for each search term on a google search and we can see an interesting if unpredicted correlation.

Which is that the number of pages about a singular or plural term is very closely correlated with the number of searches for that singular or plural term.

i.e. in this small sample - the plurals were always searched more when there were more pages showing the plural and vice versa with only one exception which was tables (and then only for the adwords measure)
With tables there were vastly more pages for table than for tables yet there were more searches for the plural term - but only google adwords. WordTracker had the predicted result of more singular searches.
This deserves closer inspection, as it is the only exception to an otherwise very useful rule of thumb (but not now!).

So In Conclusion and Summary:

We know the results of overture make it difficult to see the differences between the number of searches for a singular or plural term.

We know that this is a very small sample that we have used, and it was not done with any scientific rigour.

I have found that plural searches seem to be more popular than searches for the singular of the term (approximately twice as popular).

I have found that the number of pages listed in google under a singular or plural term whilst excluding the other term is highly correlated to whether the singular or plural term is searched for more.

So while it is hard work to determine which terms is searched on most, the number of pages listed for that term (which is easy to find) serves as a reliable 'rule-of-thumb' guide.

-aqls-

Edwin · Jan 20, 2006

maps gets more traffic than map (about 10%)
kids gets more traffic than kid (about 1000%!)

Just two data points I happen to have in my own portfolio.

aqls · Jan 20, 2006

boatsgear.co.uk is still available to reg.

So why that example?

-aqls-

Edwin · Jan 20, 2006

I think you left something out of your analysis: "If the resultant expression isn't grammatically meaningful any more, it will have little or no value".

boatsgear is nonsensical (although it's a "coined" name for a message board), so no wonder nobody has regged it.

domaingenius · Jan 21, 2006

Edwin said:
I think you left something out of your analysis: "If the resultant expression isn't grammatically meaningful any more, it will have little or no value".

boatsgear is nonsensical (although it's a "coined" name for a message board), so no wonder nobody has regged it.

But Edwin, thats all that TagNames aka Nominet have left for us to reg !!
DG

olebean · Jan 21, 2006

I cant agree I picked up skinadnormality.com and .co.uk yesterday with OV results

before anyone looks I picked up the plurals too

charlie · Jan 21, 2006

Edwin said:
I think you left something out of your analysis: "If the resultant expression isn't grammatically meaningful any more, it will have little or no value".

boatsgear is nonsensical (although it's a "coined" name for a message board), so no wonder nobody has regged it.

yeah thats right for the domain name value alone but if you were trying to generate traffic and .....(lets stick with boat gear)

so i have a site that sells boat stuff eg stuffformyboat.co.uk

i know "boat gear" is the most popular search term but the doamain "boatgear.co.uk" is taken

what i was asking is am I going to get the same SEO effects (if any) using "boatsgear" and "gearboat" as pointers to my stuffformyboat.co.uk?

PS: 100% quality post aqls - many thanks for your efforts