John Mueller answers the question why a site that ranks for a keyword phrase doesn’t rank for what they say is a synonym for the same phrase. John answers this question in general terms, explaining how important the full context of the search query is.
Synonyms and Search Results
Before Google Hummingbird, Google generally ranked websites by matching keywords in search queries with keywords in web pages.
After the Google Hummingbird update, Google replaced some important words in the query with synonyms without actually changing the meaning of the search query. The advantage of this is that now Google can find more pages to rank for, some of which are even better than pages with exact keyword matches.
This technique is called query expansion.
Today, Google does more than just query expansion to rank web pages, and as Mueller’s answer shows, some of these typically focus on what users mean when they use a search query in order to understand the full context of the search query.
People asking this question are confused because they expect a page that ranks for a keyword phrase to rank for a synonym version of that phrase. But it didn’t rank for that alternative phrase, and they wondered why.
Small differences in words affect rankings
Here is the question being asked:
“Why do small differences in synonyms or similar terms make such a big difference in ranking positions?”
The questioner gave an example of a page that ranks for the keyword phrase “editing videos” but not for the query “video editors”.
The phrase “editing a video” might relate to one thing and “video editor” might relate to another, which is how John answered the question.
How Google Search is actually ranking these two phrases
However, Google’s actual search results treat these two keywords relatively the same, and show results for video editing, only some sites that rank in one search result do not rank in the other, and some sites do not rank in the other. rank in all search results.
The difference in the specific phrases above can be explained by the fact that “editing video” is not a direct one-to-one synonym for “video editor”, although Google shows somewhat similar results.
The reason they are different is that “editing video” is ambiguous, and the “how-to” component inherent in the search phrase (“editing video”) may bias search results towards certain sites ranking for that phrase.
For example, the top results for vague phrases have a seven-step how-to on the web page, and the People Also Ask (PAA) feature shows “how do I” search queries as similar, while search results for other phrases don’t have the same in the PAA feature quality.
While John doesn’t address the specific nuances above, his answer is still 100% correct and applies to the specific question, even if he is answering the question in general terms.
the full context of the search query
John Mueller replied:
“So it’s probably perfectly normal from our point of view that, on the one hand, we’re really trying to understand things like synonyms in the query.
But we also try to see… the full context of the query.
Especially when it comes to synonyms, we might assume that something is primarily a synonym, but that doesn’t mean it’s a synonym at all. “
John makes an important point about synonyms and search phrases.
Due to the full context of the search query, this may mean that replacing a word with its synonym won’t work, as the replacement changes the meaning of the search query.
User expectations and context for search queries
John Mueller next extended the concept 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 expand a search query with synonyms.
John explained:
Especially when you look at things like Editing Videos vs. Video Editors, the expectations on the user side are different.
On the one hand, you want to edit the video. On the other hand, you might want to download a video editor.
And it looks very similar, but… the user wants something slightly different.
So from my point of view it makes sense that we would show different rankings there.
We have the same situation where words are spelled slightly differently, like you have a British or American version of an English word; if you have an accented word or letter and it has no accent, we know these are pretty much the same of.
But we also know that they are slightly different.
We try to display search results that take this into account. “
Synonyms and Keywords
John’s advice is also great for keyword research.
A common approach is to pick the most trafficked keywords and write about them, even if the site isn’t exactly about them. So the title tag and the keywords in the title element don’t match.
Citation
How Google uses synonyms in search
Watch the video at the 39.:35 minute mark
