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Plural or Singular search terms?
March 11, 2008
One of the interesting conclusions that we drew from working with Steve Johnston for our latest Hitwise University Live session and webinar was the importance of plurals. The specific example we went through at the SES conference analyzed the difference between searches for ‘laptop’ and ‘laptops’. The table below illustrates the top 10 search term suggestions for both words, excluding all branded terms.
There are a range of terms for both the plural and singular expression, with ‘cheap’ and ‘free’ featuring highly in both cases. However, there is also a noticeable difference in the ten terms. Four of the top 10 singular searches are people looking for laptop accessories: ‘laptop bags’, ‘laptop batteries’, ‘laptop memory’, and ‘laptop cases’, while a further two (‘laptop reviews’, ‘best laptop’) are terms that generally occur earlier in the buying cycle. Of the remaining four, one is for a ‘free laptop’; two more signal an intent to purchase but are actually plural terms (‘laptop computers’, ‘laptop deals’); leaving just one truly singular term that implies someone is looking to purchase a laptop with that search: ‘cheap laptop’.
Compare this with top 10 searches containing the word ‘laptops’, the majority of which are people searching for a laptop to purchase: ‘cheap laptops’, ‘refurbished laptops’, ‘pink laptops’, ‘gaming laptops’, ‘laptops for sale’, ‘laptops uk’, and ‘second hand laptops’ – many of which are quite specific tail terms that are likely to convert well. Of the remaining three, one is a great opportunity for potential affiliates (‘compare laptops’), leaving just ‘free laptops’ and ‘best laptops’ in the grey areas. Of course, this isn’t to say that ‘laptops’ is a better term than ‘laptop’, just that the plural and singular searches display different behaviors. Indeed, if you are looking to sell accessories rather than computers then it would be much better to optimize for terms containing ‘laptop’.
So, if this is true of laptop searches, is it true across the board? To answer this question I selected nine of the top product searches sending traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds category and analysed the performance of the singular and plural terms. In the table below, the columns headed ‘search volume’ (A and C) contain the volume of singular and plural searches for the particular product (expressed in terms of market share of all UK searches during the period), while the columns to the right (B and D) record what percentage of the people searching for the singular or plural term ended up on a Shopping and Classifieds site. The final column (E) illustrates how much more (or less, if the number is below 1) traffic searches for plurals sent to Shopping and Classifieds sites than singular terms [i.e.: E = (CxD)/(AxB)]
So, while the results are not conclusive, it does seem that plural terms are better at sending traffic to retailers than singular terms. Two thirds of the products tested performed better as plurals, with technology products in particular skewing in favour of an added ‘s’. Indeed, the search term ‘mobile phones’ sent almost five times as much traffic Shopping and Classifieds sites as ‘mobile phone’, while for ‘digital cameras’ / ‘digital camera’ the ratio was 4:1. So what of the exceptions? ‘dvd’ and ‘lcd tv’ both performed better as singular terms, while the product that performed best in singular form was the Apple iPod,. One reason could be that it is a specific brand term, which explains why there were five times as many searches for the singular ‘ipod’ than the plural ‘ipods’.
Posted by Robin Goad at 10:34 AM
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In Categories Retail | Search
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- The Top 100 Analyst Blogs by Technobabble 2.0 (Business Intelligence Analysis and Commentary)
Congratulations to those who made the top 100. 1 Web Strategy by Jeremiah 10 30 29 19 88 2 Compete Blog [Read More] - Do You Search in the Singular or the Plural? (Search Engine Roundtable)
A Hitwise post digs into the behavior of searchers and sees whether they prefer searching in the singular or plural. Using the term "laptop" versus "laptops," it is clear that "laptops" is the winner in search. When investigating nine other... [Read More]
Comments
Great to see some stats here. what is interesting from the laptop results is that singular terms tend to be used as adjectives (and used as the first term in the string) e.g. "laptop accessories" and "laptop bags" whereas plural terms appear to related more to specific product searches e.g. "pink laptops" and "refurbished laptops" etc.
Definate food for thought especially when creating PPC campaigns where you need to be as targetted as possible to get your best ROI
Many thanks
Posted by Suzanne Taylor | March 12, 2008 10:31 AM
It is fantastic to see some hard stats on this.
It's a little similar to lead generation searches, where there are often closely related searches of the type:
bookkeeping sydney
bookkeeper sydney
bookkeepers sydney
In my analysis to date, searches of the type "bookkeepers sydney" are much higher converting than the gerund form "bookkeeping sydney". It would be great to publish some comparative stats on this as you have done.
Posted by Will Swayne | March 13, 2008 11:49 PM
It might seem usual, but this information is important to people with websites, SEO and web designers. It helps alot with your traffic.
Daniel Chege
www.poppaproductions.net
Poppa Productions Web Designs.
Posted by Daniel Chege | March 14, 2008 09:07 PM
I wonder what the relationship of plurals might be after the traffic is delivered. Do plurals or singular terms have higher conversion rates to generate more sales. I would be interested to see a study on that.
Posted by Anthony Fisher | March 15, 2008 03:00 PM
Interesting article. In my industry, customers are more likely to search for 'conservatories' rather than 'conservatory'.
The word 'conservatory' tends to be used by people searching for terms like 'conservatory furniture', 'conservatory blinds' or 'the butterfly conservatory', whereas searches for 'conservatories' are more likely to be potential customers.
Posted by Matthew Glover | March 15, 2008 07:35 PM
Make sense. People want to look a more than one item when shopping.
Posted by Jaan Kanellis | March 15, 2008 10:18 PM
I agreee 150% that plurals work so much better than in the singular form. I work as the SEO manager at Customerstreet who look after UFindUs.com, MoreUK.com and SmileLocal.com all of which are large UK business directories. I also do agree if its a name brand that someone is looking fior they will use a singular as they knwo what they want. This a fantastic article for people who want to know how to get more traffic to their business websites.
Posted by lee johnson | March 18, 2008 11:08 AM
The most important part of SEO is keyword. Search engine optimization begins with the proper and optimal use of keywords and keyword phrases.
Selection of keywords is the most important step. There are many online keyword selection tools available like overture, word tracker, Google adwords etc. Use such keywords or key phrases that target your business. Analyzing each keyword for competition should also be done. When we have highly competitive keywords we usually use a combination of keywords. Secondly after keyword selection comes content. It is usually said that content is the king. Suppose you have a website that ranks high in SERP but if your site does not provide useful content or related content, then the visitor will leave your site and switch to other site. Writing keyword rich content is very fruitful in SEO process. There should be a proper ratio of the keywords and text. There should be at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized. Once proper keywords are optimized it easy to gain traffic.
Posted by Palcom Online | May 14, 2008 10:33 AM
Way to go with the copy and paste effor 'Palcom Online' you contributed so much to the discussion...
Posted by Thanks Pal | June 23, 2008 05:29 AM
The best way to rank high on a keyword is to follow some basic SEO rules. First you must optimise you website with the keyword phase you want top rank higher with, this can be done first in the title area of your site Find the best and Cheap Laptops . secondly put the meta description i.e. Our online store provides the finest collection of Cheap Laptops found anywhere on the web. Thirdly you should include some Meta keywords, on the Meta tag section i.e. Meta keyword = Cheap Laptops.
Finally in our case we are promoting cheap laptop computers therefore, somewhere in your website you must mention or talk about cheap laptop computer otherwise Google will not give authority to your SEO efforts.
Posted by price comparison | June 11, 2009 02:42 PM
Great post Robin
Thanks for that, it reinforces our train of thought over the last 2 months. Always a difficult one to gauge but for our money we think your observations are on the money. The stats seem to back the observations up.
Hopefully there will be some more comments positive or negative but at least a discussion.
Mnay thanks
Posted by Richard Boyd | March 11, 2008 09:41 PM