What is the significance of google search results?

[huzefa420]

I often see in posts here that people post the number of results in a google search for their domain.

For example is someone has a domain WordArticleWord.com
They will post the number of results in google for:
"Word Article Word"
Word Article Word
WordArticleWord

What is the significance of this?

Say if I have a domain with Word Article Word giving me 12 million results in google, what does that tell me about the domain's worth? What if the other combinations dont give me many results?

 

[petrosc]

I'm no SEO guru but IMO the result that matters is for "Word Article Word"

 

[WeBuyThe.Com]

This question comes up often and here's the best explanation I have found to date


Not everyone knows what quote marks mean in a search entry

From The New York Times, February 12, 2006, article by Randall Stross on amazon:

"Something in Amazon's secretive investor relations office has wafted through the air into its customer service department. The company has long provided a toll-free number for customers who want to speak with a human representative to solve a problem. Yet it does not mention the number on any help page on its site. If this guess-our-phone-number game is intended to curtail calls and to keep associated costs low, it seems unlikely to thwart anyone. A search for "Amazon 800 number" takes Google's servers an eighth of a second to produce 3.3 million results.

******************************************************************************************

Putting exact phrase quotation marks into this search yields a grand total of 760 results for the phrase, a number which differs from 3.3 million. But the whole idea in the last paragraph is wrong, since the number of results has little to do with thwarting a search; for in this case there is no practical difference in ease of finding the amazon 800 number between hundreds and billions of pages returned.

No doubt everyone here knows that searching AMAZON 800 NUMBER produces all those pages containing the words AMAZON and 800 and NUMBER. Searching "AMAZON 800 NUMBER" returns all those pages that contain the exact phrase AMAZON 800 NUMBER.

I once was talking to web designer A who said that he was more famous than some other web designer B. Designer A claimed some vast number of results in Google, far more than the wretched B. The number seemed large, so I asked A if he put quote marks around his name when ego-surfing. "No, that makes B higher than me." I almost blurted out something about designer arithmetic, but instead bit my tongue.

What is the biggest possible difference in results for words in quotes and not in quotes? Here's a guess. The exact phrase "the and" yields 0 documents. Without quotes, the phrase yields 8,200,000,000. This will hold at least until Google spiders this thread.

--Edward Tufte, February 11, 2006

 

[petrosc]

superb article, well written

 

[dcristo]

The exact match search ie. "Word Article Word" will tell you the number of times that particular keyphrase is found on the internet, hence it's popularity. It's a poor indicator for competition though.

 

[thevirtual]

Their is a big difference between number of search results for a phrase with and without quotes.

The main reason for displaying Google/Yahoo search results is to show the relevance for a word or phrase by showing the amount of search results it yields. This shows the search popularity of a phrase, a higher search popularity on a generic name usually means more value.

thevirtual

 

[DomainMagnate]

Use the quotes "your crappy domain" - the more results, the better


~MG

 

[HomerJ]

The main reason for displaying Google/Yahoo search results is to show the relevance for a word or phrase by showing the amount of search results it yields

with this i agree

This shows the search popularity of a phrase

with this i somewhat disagree. i hate to break it, but because a string of text "word article word" is being written about, does not necessarily mean it is being searched for. yes, there is a difference. while the phrase in itself may be popular, it may not be something that anyone is looking for. such a "word article word" article may still have great branding value though.

although, i don't mind others disagreeing with my view, as i do have one 2 word generic .com name that, while having over 2 million yahoo results in quotations, had zero overture results, i hope to be able to sell it for at least $xxx

here's an example though. "the and" ... oops :lol:

 

[huzefa420]

Thanks to all those who replied. I think its clearer now.