Google and special characters

[stevewinters]

How do cities with special characters (assuming google treats periods and apostrophes as special) rank versus those without?
Would "st john real estate" or "st. john real estate" or "st. john's real estate" be treated differently? All three are separate cities.
Interested to hear your thoughts and tips to use those special characters if they are required. (I need the latter search words)

Cheers,

Steve

[DMike]

I'm not sure how they rank, but i've read that google doesn't include special characters in their search because they are very used and would slow the search very much. I guess those characters are taken out of the string when they search for it, so probabily are treated the same ... just my two cents on it

[kid disco]

st john real estate

st. john real estate

st. john's real estate

[stevewinters]

I looked at all three links. They are, for the most part the same.
The problem is with the 3 different searches they all produce quite a few in the US Virgin Islands.
Am I to assume that I have to compete not only against people in my area for top rank with "st. john's real estate" but as those in the US Virgin Islands?
Anyone have some suggestions as to a way to do this or a workaround to only have "st. john's" be the key word?

Thanks in advance.

[ericbramlett]

Look again. You'll see that St. John's is pretty different.

Think like someone searching. If you ran that search and saw those results, you would probably search again, right? How would you search better? What keywords would you try on the second or third search?

[kid disco]

First thing you should do is perform some keyword research.

[stevewinters]

yes "st. john's" does produce different results, but I guess what I was trying to say was that there still seems to be a lot of similar listings from "st john" in all three searches.

[Dave Kovaleski]

This site works pretty good to do key word comparisons www googlebattle com

[kid disco]

This site works pretty good to do key word comparisons www googlebattle com

All that site does is tell you how many results are returned for your keyword query.

[rmasse10]

I think that google just ignores them and just focuses on the alpha numerics of what you are searching for