Search Terms with Apostrophes

[5225Marketing]

In doing keyword research I discovered that the Google Adwords Tools returns results with a space in search terms where an apostrophe should be.

For example:  Searching for 'mens fashion' or 'men's fashion' will return keyword ideas like 'men s fashion trends', 'men s fashion styles'. Same thing happens if yous search for '50s fashion' or 'mens suits'.

Not only that but if you search for 'men s fashion' in the adwords tool you get 14,800 exact matches! Who would you use that term? And if you do search for it in Google, it will auto correct to 'men's fashion'.

If you know the answer to what a term like 'men s fashion' signifies, you can skip the rest of this post and answer my question (thanks!). If not, here's what I did to try and figure it out - but I'm stuck and I need your help.

1. First off, I did a search for all 3 terms: (mens fashion, men's fashion and men s fashion) in the adwords tool. The tool responded with different numbers for each, with  'men s fashion' far exceeding 'men's fashion'. See image 1

2. I did a search for each of the three terms in Google. The top 10 results for each were different. See image 2

3. Google reads 'men s fashion' as 'men's fashion'. I know that because:

1. Google says 'showing result's for men's fashion' (obvious!)
2. Google instant lists terms beginning with 'men's fashion...' See image 3
3. Related searches are identical for those two but not for 'mens fashion'.

4. But it's not completely the same since as I mentioned you get different results, and the number of results found are different as well.

So that brings me back to my question: When the tool says that 28 people search for [men's fashion] and 14,800 search for [men s fashion]. What on earth does it mean?

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[evolvingSEO]

Hi

Great question! Stumped me a little, but I found this article.  Safe to say it seems as if google ignores the apostrophe (and other characters including hyphen etc) so in effect "men's fashion" and "men s fashion" is the same thing.

-Dan

[RyanKent]

Nice link Dan.

I support Dan's reply with the exception of when exact match is used. If you want to target a specific form of the phrase, exact match should give you only the form you submit.

[5225Marketing]

Thanks. That was a really useful link.

I'm going to take that to mean that 'men s' is a stand in for 'men's' or 'men!s' or 'men!!!!!!!!!s'

I'm still not clear about how to apply that (as in how Google applies that) to organic search because they return (slightly) different results 'men s' and 'men's'. Also, why would the adwords tool show separate search volume for both terms if one's a stand in for the other?

[SEO-Pump.com]

I think that one thing that probably causes a lot of confusion for most people is that the algorithm google uses to return search results is far more complex most likely than the algorithm they use in the Google Keyword Tool to return lists of keywords.

I've probably spent more than my share of time trying to wrap my head around this and it is the best theory i have come up with to date.

Also, i think that some of the ranking factors are significantly disproportionate in weight when comparing a regular search vs. a "phrase match" search.