Google Caffeine: Phrase Match Results Radically Different Now??

[tvanslooten]

I'm not going to take claim for finding this as it was "StevenR" from his marketing blog that pointed this out in another forum I belong to but I wanted the Warriors take on this.

Before Caffeine came around, we were all taught to aim for keyword phrases with less than 50,000 phrase match results or less (and yes, I know some say shoot for 100,000 or less or 150,000 or less but that's not the point). That was all fine and good until now...

Have you checked your phrase match results lately? They are through the roof! Take any local keyword phrase that was getting 5,000 or less phrase match results before Caffeine and now that same phrase gets over 50,000! Keywords that got 50,000 phrase match results before now have hundreds of thousands!

I'm not finding this across all keywords, but I'm definitely seeing it. I wonder if this will be a permanent change or if Google is just messing around with stuff while Caffeine is in beta. As StevenR pointed out, if this is permanent it will be a slight game changer as we'll have to stop ignoring the phrase match results - or figure out what new number is a good number to shoot for when it comes to SEO as "less than 50,000" isn't going to be applicable.

Travis

[dburk]

Hi Travis,

There are more useful metrics for determining competition level. Try using operators like "allintitle:", "intext:", and "inanchor:". These will give you slightly more useful numbers that show you pages that you will actually need to compete with.

An even better idea is to ignore how many competing pages there are and focus on evaluating how strong the top 20 pages appear to be. Who cares if there is 10 million pages as long as you can get your page onto the first page of SERPs. All you have to do is beat out the page at position #10.

[Zeus66]

Originally Posted by dburk

An even better idea is to ignore how many competing pages there are and focus on evaluating how strong the top 20 pages appear to be. Who cares if there is 10 million pages as long as you can get your page onto the first page of SERPs. All you have to do is beat out the page at position #10.

BINGO! This is exactly right. The best skill you can learn in keyword research is how to properly evaluate the Top 10 for a given keyword search. The number of competitors is basically insignificant if you can find a wedge into the Top 10 because you discover some weakness there. Let others chase their tails worrying about the other 999,990 "competitors."

John

[ados67]

Don is right. I often get clients asking for a discount due to them achieving
a #45 rank for a certain keyword. If our original price quote guaranteed a top
5 ranking while they were at #150, they're certain the new price quote (after
they've done considerable work on their site) would be almost 3 times lower...

It's said, but most of the people who ever practiced SEO as more than just
a hobby know that the top results are the hardest to beat.

Sincerely,