A new way to search in Google

Google not working for you – try the new Verbatim Search tool (useful for SEOs too)

Value/Importance: ★★★★★

Recommended link: Google Inside Search intro

Our commentary on the Verbatim feature

Sometimes Google is just too clever, interpreting spelling mistakes, adding synonyms and based results on previous searches. Creating “a search in quotes” can help here, but sometimes you don’t want these additional features.

It’s now introduced “Verbatim” to turn off it’s main “user intention assumption” which you can access as with other Advanced Search features from the left (ex-Jazz) sidebar:

The announcement about the update is interesting for SEOs since it lists the normal improvements Google can make:.

• making automatic spelling corrections personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
• including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
• finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
• searching for words with the same stem like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
• making some of your terms optional, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]

I was interested especially in the first one since if you want to check search rankings and you’re logged into Google as you typically are now with Gmail and G+ your previous search history may be taken into account (although I have this feature turned off. So Google has inadvertently given marketers a quick way to check pure, non-personalised search rankings. Hope you find that helpful sometime!