How do SE's see abbreviated queries.
-
Do search engines pay attention to periods in abbreviated queries? If I use Mt. Bachelor all over my site, would SE's not rank my site well for queries that use Mt Bachelor?
-
They are looked at as spaces just like hyphens. As far as I remember, Matt Cutts says the only symbols that count as a character are underscores. Everything else is a space.
-
They are smart enough to figure it out. Just did searches to "mt kilimanjaro" v "mt. kilimanjaro" and the results returned were identical (meaning they consider them identical).
However, a search for "mount kilimanjaro" produced slightly different results so "mount v mt" usage on site may affect rankings but a period wont.
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 -
'sameAs' Mark up for different spellings of a Product/Keyword, is it possible?
Hi There, I've seen that for social media profiles you can mark them up to be the 'sameAs', example below: - <code><scripttype="application ld+json"="">{ "@context":"http://schema.org", "@type":"Organization", "name":"Your Organization Name", "url":"http://www.your-site.com", "sameAs":[ "http://www.facebook.com/your-profile", "http://www.twitter.com/yourProfile", "http://plus.google.com/your_profile" ] }</scripttype="application></code> My question is can you do something similar for your product/keyword? For example when you can spell the word in different ways e.g. Whisky (English) or Whiskey (Irish/US). I've had a look at schema.org but I'm not sure if I'm headed down the wrong path? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Why are these URL's suddenly appearing in WMT?
One of our clients has suddenly experienced a sudden increase in crawl errors for smart phones overnight for pages which no longer exist and there are no links to these pages according to Google. There is no evidence as to why Google would suddenly start to crawl these pages as they have not existed for over 5 years, but it does come after a new site design has been put live. Pages do not appear to be in the index when a site search is used. There was a similar increase in crawl errors on desktop initially after the new site went live, but these quickly returned to normal. Mobile crawl errors only became apparent after this. There are some URL's showing which have no linking page detected so we don't know where these URL's are being found. WMT states "Googlebot couldn't crawl this URL because it points to a non-existent page". Those that do have a linking page are showing an internal page which also doesn't exist so it can't possibly link to any page. Any insight is appreciated. Andy and Mark at Click Consult.
Technical SEO | | ClickConsult0 -
100's of Footer Links... what is the safe play?
Hello, One of my clients wants to know what you guys think is the best solution. He sells 100's of templates a month that have a footer link on it pointing to our homepage. Anchor links are "keyword" & "Brand Name" Some are different than others. Do we update the templates so those are no-follow links in the footer? Do we just make all the links to: Brand Name and have them follow? I understand Brand Name is the business name but I am also afraid that Brand name is so close to the money making keyword in the industry and Google might think we are trying to game the system. Looking for your expert opinions!
Technical SEO | | MoosaHemani0 -
To integrate a blog tool onto site - or build a blog solution - what's better for SEO?
Currently looking at adding a blog to our company site subdirectory and wanted to know if there was a SEO distinction between the following methods: Integrating a bolt-on blog tool with the site to create the blog VS. just using the current site infrastructure to build blog functionality. What's better for SEO? (and if tool integration is the overwhelming response - which tool?). Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Canonical Tag on Blog - Roger says it's incorrect?
Hi I have just released a post on my blog and I wanted to check my primary keyword for the post to make sure the page scores well. However when I did the page report it showed the Canonical Rel tag was incorrect. example of link the blog is http://www.example.com/Blog/post-comment/ The Canonical tag is below What am I doing wrong, as it looks correct to me?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Should we use & or and in our url's?
Example: /Zambia/kasanka-&-bangweulu or /Zambia/kasanka-and-bangweulu which is the better url from the search engines point of view?
Technical SEO | | tribes0 -
Title Tag won't update
The Home page Title Tag on my Wordpress CMS Website doesn't update. It has the Thesis Theme and All in One SEO plugin. I've updated it exactly the same on the Home page, for SEO plugin, and in the Thesis Theme - but still it displays the old one.. The site was last cached about a week ago - 3X since I've been attempting to change it. The other page's Title Tags update instantly when updated, but not the Home page. I've been digging for a solution and can't seem to find an answer. What could be the problem? (www.austinfitnessgyms.com -It should be: Austin Gym | Kickboxing in Austin | Impact MMA Fitness)
Technical SEO | | OhYeahSteve0