How Google handles keywords and punctuation?

[Rocket.Fuel]

How does Google handle punctuation of keywords within its search?

If I have three keywords together, but on the site there is a question mark between them, does Google ignore the question mark? Or should I think of a new way of writing the content so Google likes it more?

And would this apply with articles (a, the, etc) and prepositions such as (in, of, etc.)?

Thanks a lot.

[ZephSnapp]

Hi Mark,

Great explanation.  I was recently told that Google does ignore stop words and prepositions, but my internal research for clients shows that this is not the case.  While I really don't want to give any examples, I can confirm that this is the case.

However, if the question is specific to having a question makr between keywords, the effect is relatively minimal.  What I am trying to say is while you may want to reconsider the way you write for the future, this particular post should be fine IMO.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Reubenb-   Google doesn't ignore the question mark or prepositions...

Here is a related post from a fellow moz'r who is big time.......Dr. Peter Myers. See below for his explanation:

"There was a time when Google simply ignored so-called "stop words", for processing efficiency, and so they two queries in your example were essentially the same. It looks like that has changed over time, though. See this post from 2008 by Bill Slawski (an expert on Google patents and technology):

http://www.seobythesea.com/2008/0...

...and a quick experiment someone did in 2010 that seems to confirm that:

http://www.dougwilliams.com/blog/...

In my experience, it's a bit specific to the query and competition. In many cases, the addition or subtractions of a stop word may not make much of a difference, but in your case it probably does. If the term you want to target is "Holidays in Ireland" and the Top 10 for that term seems different from the shorter term, I'd say to use "in". I'm seeing some differences between those two sets of Top 10 results (not huge, but some)."

*End of Dr. Peter Myers big time explanation.

I hope this information helps you. I find that all things being equal,  you are better off writing complete sentences and putting emphasis on your "money keywords" and "secondary keywords" throughout your content = Better SEO results