Ignored stop words

[Dazza30]

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Ive been learning about seo for a while now, but untill today i hadnt come across stop words.

I have been told that stop words are ignored by most search engines.

Does that mean if im building a site that is focused on pay as you go mobile phones, i cant use pay as you go as a keyword or in meta and h tags etc because the search engines will ignore the words you and as.


Please could someone advise me on this please?

[Top banana]

The advice you have read about stop words is incorrect.

This is easy to prove - if you search on google for "pay as you go mobile phones" google finds 538,000 pages. According to the advice you have been given the "stop" words "as you" are ignored. That means that if you searched for "pay go mobile phones" you should get the same number of results, but you don't, google finds 413,000 pages.

I suggest you stop reading seo forums (the advice is soooo hit and miss) and read google's own advice instead - http://www.google.com/webmasters/doc...rter-guide.pdf

If you need anymore seo advice I suggest you limit your reading to only a couple of sources. I recommend - SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Read SEOmoz, Rank Better
SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

[Dazza30]

The advice you have read about stop words is incorrect.

This is easy to prove - if you search on google for "pay as you go mobile phones" google finds 538,000 pages. According to the advice you have been given the "stop" words "as you" are ignored. That means that if you searched for "pay go mobile phones" you should get the same number of results, but you don't, google finds 413,000 pages.

Thanks for the reply Top banana.

I assumed as much but wasnt sure, thats why i asked on this forum.

Oh and thanks for the links to seomoz ill take a look.

[Brendon]

Stop words are not ignored - they are treated as null entities. The difference is subtle, but there. It mostly matters when calculating terms such as proximity, density etc. However, they are also *not* ignored in certain circumstances, such as when they are used as anchor text