Less Use One Word Searches
Monday, July 24th, 2006Fewer people are making one word searches in search engines according to OneStat.com and it seems as if there is an increase in the number of three and four words searches. Their stats show that two word searches are still the most common though.
“Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo can drive a lot of traffic to a web site. It is important that a webmaster or SEO expert knows what kind of search phrases they have to use to drive more traffic to a site.” said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.
Can using fewer words in your page title make any difference with all these stats in mind? Have a look at these results from Google when listing only the pages from one site. After the main pages (home pages and main categories) and where the site listings start, you will notice that all the sites listed first are the ones that have only one word or no spaces in the title. This tells me that Google for example places more value on pages with fewer words stuffed into the title.
Searching with one word searches usually brings up the main site though, that is if the url and title are almost the identical. As you add more words to the search, so the site you are looking for has more sites challenging for the top position with those addition keywords.
My advice is to target a set of no more than three words on a page and you can start by using one to three words in the page title.
