There’s been a lot of talk about the impact of Google Instant search but one thing I’ve found over the last week is that it certainly guides towards the plural.
Go to Google and type in an item that has a plural. Shoe, bike, hat. Google instantly throws the plural on the top result. The singular is there as well but you have to drop down in the recommended searches to find it. Will it effect traffic to names that are singular generics? I can’t see how it won’t. I realize Google is guiding towards the word with more search popularity and the person that bought the name realized it wouldn’t get as many searches as the plural (obviously not in all cases) but until recently, it was the Google user dictating the number of searches, not Google. Some may counter that many people don’t use the suggestions, but I know people and in general, they are lazy. If they see something close to what they want, they’re going to click.
As domain owners and website owners it’s always been a tough road trying to get to the top of Google searches. Now we have another obstacle if you own the singular. This certainly will effect my buying decisions from this point further and I think it further escalates the value of plural generic domains. I prefer to have Google working for me than fighting against it.
Google is over-rated. I don’t base anything I do on Google. And, I am very satisfied with my business. I simply do the right thing, and if corresponds with Google’s take on it, it is purely accidental.
When I purchase Domains, certain words are better in Plural, and others are better in Singular, and yet another set, it makes no difference. My belief is that the current model of having Google determine words is flawed. I base my words on Searchers and methods of search.
Shane, I tried to “pluralize” apricot/banana/apple/cucumber/tomato and they all had no “s” appended.
However, sofa”s” came up and car”max” (for cars) so I think it’s all relative.
Overall, generics win regardless of singular/plural over long tails, in my opinion.