There is NO change!
Synonyms have always been bolded too in Google, abbreviations too.
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Stemming on Google isn’t new. The company has been doing it since back in 2003. It was also highlighting stemmed words back then. If you searched for "running," and it found a page with the word "run," the word "run" would be bolded in the search listing description.
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http://searchengineland.com/google-now-searching-for-synonyms-14632 (article published in 2008) |
TOM – there are two changes.
One: all synonyms are now bolded, not only stemming variants (synonyms with the same main core).
Two: They recently "made a special effort to analyze synonyms impact and quality", so presumably the algorithm will now work even better. |
Not sure it's new.
When I search for "PM Italy", words "Prime Minister" are bolded and it has worked like that for years, isn't it? |
That's true. I wouldn't say "years" (no more than two years, at least), but "pictures" were never bolded when you searched for "photos", and that's the change. |
Perhaps, people might be interested in this related article – which discusses the patent: http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/12/24/google-nails-patent-for-query-synonyms-in-query-context/ |
Google's post is remarkable long, but here is one piece of text:
"We also recently made a change to how our synonyms are displayed. In our search result snippets, we bold the terms of your search. Historically, we have bolded synonyms such as stemming variants — like the word "picture" for a search with the word "pictures." Now, we've extended this to words that our algorithms very confidently think mean the same thing, even if they are spelled nothing like the original term. This helps you to understand why that result is shown, especially if it doesn't contain your original search term." |
Tom, run running aren't synonyms, that's same word in different form. photo and pictures are synonyms. I think this is a great enhancement by Google. It will be much easier to group AdWords ad groups now. |
