Can You Optimize for Stop Words in Search Results?

Dec 30, 2009 - 8:39 am 4 by

A HighRankings Forum thread asks an interesting SEO question. The question is, can you optimize for stop words in Google or other search engines?

His particular example seems flawed, in that he is calling IT a stop word and it is stopping him for optimizing for the query [it companies]. However, when I search for [it companies] in Google, it does seem to figure out, IT here stands for information technology.

But in general, is there a need to optimize for stop words? Do we have more examples of cases? If so, can it be done?

Here is a poll:

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

Update: See Jill's comment below for the issue this SEO has in the thread.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 28, 2025

Nov 28, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Ads Account Hijacks, Thanksgiving Google Volatility & Web Guide For All

Nov 28, 2025 - 8:01 am
Spiders

OpenAI Scales Up Crawling & Bots For The Holidays

Nov 28, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google's Sundar Pichai Monitors X On Launch Days For Feedback

Nov 28, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Gemini 3 Now Powering Google AI Mode For Some Queries, Automatically

Nov 28, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google AI Overviews Showcases Events With New Results

Nov 28, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Tracking Back Links: How Do You Do It?