: Why search results differ so much when the search term [what is a ...] is asked within quotes or not A couple of months ago I had published on my blog an article with a title in the form:

A couple of months ago I had published on my blog an article with a title in the form: what is a table (table is not really the word I used-I write the word here as an example).

I had seen through Google Keyword Planner that this search term has very low competition and a decent volume.
However, when I search in Google for this term I cannot find my post even in the last page after 450 results. Apart the first couple of Google pages with relevant results, all other pages which outrank my post do not answer the particular question (what is a table) but they have a great density of the word table in their content just because they happen to make or sell tables.

On the other hand, when I put the search term in quotes ("what is a table") I find my post in the 7th position of the first page!

My post's url is in the form example.com/eating/what-is-a-table/ and the post is optimized with Yoast SEO plugin (wordpress). The plugin returns that my keyword contains a stop-word which is the word "a", however I have to include "a" as it is a part of the search term which I'm targeting.
My site is 15 months old but I rank decently in other search terms. For example in the term [table definition], my relevant post ranks on the 4th page. The posts [what is a table] and [table definition] were published on the same date.

In light of the above explanations and in a few words the question is:
why search results differ so much when this search term what is a ... is asked within quotes or not.

10% popularity Vote Up Vote Down