Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does an Apostrophe affect searches?
-
Does Google differentiate between keyphrase structures such as Mens Sunglasses & Men**'**s Sunglasses? I.e. does the inclusion/exclusion of an apostrophe make any difference when optimising your main keyword/phrase for a page?
Keyword explorer appears to give different results..... I.e. no data for Men's Sunglasses, but data appears for Mens sunglasses. So if I optimise my page to include the apostrophe, will it screw the potential success for that page?
Thanks
Bob
-
Hi there!
Search engines have gotten smarter in the past few years and should be able to determine that the keyword (with AND without an apostrophe) means the same thing. I wouldn't worry about the keywords you're tracking and the keywords you're using within your content if the only difference is the apostrophe usage.
-
Thank you Rob, that really helps!
-
Hi Bob,
Search engines are pretty good about grammar and punctuation. As a general rule, rankings aren't impacted by your use (or lack thereof) of punctuation in your titles, content, etc.
The only time punctuation in your content might make a difference is if the punctuation alters the meaning of the sentence - an example I like to use involves a title of an article on Rachel Ray which reads, "Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog" which, with proper grammar, would read, "Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking, her family and her dog". Obviously, these 2 sentences mean completely different things, and Google will pick up on that based on your content.
The reason keyword explorer is kicking back no data for the search term including the apostrophe is likely because no one uses the apostrophe when conducting their search. As an example, if I am looking for a plumber in New York City, I'm going to search "plumber new york city" or "plumber nyc" rather than "I am looking for a plumber in New York City, New York".
To answer your question directly:
No, using apostrophes in your content will in no way impede your ability to rank for your keyword in the example you have given. You have given contextual information which Google will interpret and rank your pages accordingly.
Hope this helps to explain what's going on. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.
Cheers,
Rob
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Spam URL'S in search results
We built a new website for a client. When I do 'site:clientswebsite.com' in Google it shows some of the real, recently submitted pages. But it also shows many pages of spam url results, like this 'clientswebsite.com/gockumamaso/22753.htm' - all of which then go to the sites 404 page. They have page titles and meta descriptions in Chinese or Japanese too. Some of the urls are of real pages, and link to the correct page, despite having the same Chinese page titles and descriptions in the SERPS. When I went to remove all the spammy urls in Search Console (it only allowed me to temporarily hide them), a whole load of new ones popped up in the SERPS after a day or two. The site files itself are all fine, with no errors in the server logs. All the usual stuff...robots.txt, sitemap etc seems ok and the proper pages have all been requested for indexing and are slowly appearing. The spammy ones continue though. What is going on and how can I fix it?
Technical SEO | | Digital-Murph0 -
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
Hi Guys, My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards. I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me; Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway! Any help is appreciated. Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | Sandicliffe1 -
Why isn't my homepage number #1 when searching my brand name?
Hi! So we recently (a month ago) lunched a new website, we have great content that updates everyday, we're active on social platforms, and we did all that's possible, at the moment, when it comes to on site optimization (a web developer will join our team this month and help us fix all the rest). When I search for our brand name all our social profiles come up first, after them we have a few inner pages from our different news sections, but our homepage is somewhere in the 2nd search page... What may be the reason for that? Is it just a matter of time or is there a problem with our homepage I'm unable to find? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Orly-PP0 -
Why is my site jumping around in google search ?
Hi I've been trying to get my page up in google results and I was wondering why the constant fluctuation. For example, on one day the pages is nr. 26, the next day it's nr. 65 then jumps back on say 30 and then in a few more days it's going back to 50. What's the logic behind that ? Thanks Cezar
Technical SEO | | sparts1 -
Notice of DMCA removal from Google Search
Dear Mozer's Today I get from Google Webmaster tools a "Notice of DMCA removal" I'll paste here the note to get your opinions "Hello, Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly infringing materials may be found at the end of this message. The affected URLs are listed below: http://www.freesharewaredepot.com/productpages/Ultimate_Spelling__038119.asp" So I perform these steps: 1. Remove the page from the site (now it gives 404). 2. Remove it from database (no listed on directory, sitemap.xml and RSS) 3. I fill the "Google Content Removed Notification form" detailing the removal of the page. My question is now I have to do any other task, such as fill a site reconsideration, or only I have to wait. Thank you for your help. Claudio
Technical SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
How to handle (internal) search result pages?
Hi Mozers, I'm not quite sure what the best way is to handle internal search pages. In this case it's for an ecommerce website with about 8.000+ products and search pages currently look like: example.com/search.php?search=QUERY+HERE. I'm leaning towards making them follow, noindex. Since pages like this can be easily abused for duplicate content and because I'd rather have the category pages ranked. How would you handle this?
Technical SEO | | Qon0 -
Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0 -
Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?
Quick question: if you using a parantheses around a keyword, do search bots still recognize the keyword? Fox ex: Welcome to a website about the National Basketball Association (NBA). Will the bots recognize that I'm trying to optimize to NBA and not (NBA)? Is this different for tags vs. actual body copy?
Technical SEO | | BPIAnalytics2