Google is taking a different approach to tackling synonyms in the search results. If you run a search on Google for say ‘royalty free pictures’ you’ll get an interesting result:

Together with ‘pictures’ Google also highlights ‘photos’ in the search results. This is the new way Google handles synonyms. In cases when the search engine thinks that the keyword in your query and the one in the search results are practically one and the same thing, it will highlight the synonym in the search results.

The interesting thing is that the keyword ‘photos’ is even highlighted in the URL of the first result. That suggests that Google can go beyond just highlighting keywords. As the technology progresses this approach should be applied to treating synonyms in anchor texts, alt texts, URLs, etc. So a link with ‘auto repair’ in the anchor should affect a site’s  ranking for ‘car repair’ as well. This is a very logical way for Google to go, because if a site is relevant to those who search for ‘cell phones’, it’s no less relevant for those of us looking for ‘mobile phones’.

This is a great step forward for the search engine technology. Because the better the search engine understands your intent as a searcher, the better results it will serve. And it should certainly make our lives as SEOs much easier. We won’t need to squeeze all the synonyms and variations of our keywords into the limited real-estate of the titles and Meta descriptions when optimizing our search listings. And of course if and when anchor texts in incoming links become effective for their synonyms, link building will get easier as well.

But that all is yet to come. As of today Google seems to only apply the new approach to a very limited number of synonyms like: Song words = song lyrics; motion pictures = movies, etc. Nevertheless it maybe a good idea to keep an eye at what synonyms Google acknowledges in your niche and make use of it.

Of course sometimes Google gets it wrong and highlights the words that are not synonymous to the searcher’s query.  But the search engine is just starting to learn our language, so let’s not be too hard on it.