More sites found WITH quotes, than without?? (3x more!)...

[TimothyW]

I did a google search on a phrase. Said 137k sites.

Then I did same phrase in quotes -- came up as 443k sites.

How can that be?

-- TW

[RayW]

Originally Posted by TimothyW

I did a google search on a phrase. Said 137k sites.

Then I did same phrase in quotes -- came up as 443k sites.

How can that be?

-- TW

I see this too sometimes. Can anyone shed some light on the subject?

[vtotheyouknow]

Originally Posted by outwest

Thats a complete waste of time doing the google quote thing

that tells you nothing about the top 10 , and the top 10 is your only competition that matters

Sorry man, but that's inaccurate.

It's amazing how many times now I've seen you post absolutely unfounded nonsense all over this forum in an utterly arrogant fashion. Then when somebody who knows what they're talking about (e.g. Alexa Smith and other vets) come along to politely correct you and attempt to undo the damage you've done to impressionable newbie minds who see your post count and think "OOOoooOoo, he must really know his stuff", you retaliate in a most disgraceful and puerile manner and backup exactly none of your statements.

I'm not the only one who's sick of it. Either furnish proof for your assertions or reserve your thoughts for situations upon which you can comment intelligently.

Searching WITHOUT quotes means that the results can contain any combination of the words you inputed as well as any prefix and suffix words. This gives you NO indication of your actual top 10 competition.

Searching with quotes reveals whether there are any folks targeting your EXACT keyword phrase, and as you know, Google is highly partial to the exact keyword phrase, DESPITE the fact that somebody may be searching without quotes. As a matter of fact, Google automatically furnishes those quotes most of the time. However, if there are no highly relevant (i.e. exact match) results, G provides whatever results it deems to be relevant ENOUGH.

Searching without quotes to assess your top 10 comp (you should actually be looking at top 3 only) is a recipe for disaster at worst and a colossal waste of time at best. How do I know? Because I've done it more times than I can count. How else do I know? A little thing called a Google search.

Keyword Research: How to Manually Look Up Competitive Data

Do your homework and take what people promulgate on this forum with a grain of salt PLEASE for your own sakes.

Vic