What are Stop Words?

In an attempt to speed up searches and save space, some search engines won't record extremely common words present on the page. These are referred to as "stop words." Stop words are used by AltaVista, Inktomi and Google.

Look at this sentence:

The climb to the peak is difficult when the snow is deep.

"The" has multiple instances. Some search engines may replace these instances with a marker. The sentence could then be stored like this:

- climb to - peak is difficult when - snow is deep.

By using markers the sentence is simplified, retains its relevancy and saves space. Furthermore, Relevance is not grabbed by common terms. The amount of space saved may seem minimal per page but multiply that by millions of pages and the benefit becomes obvious.

On the other hand some search engines, including Google, do store every word on the page. However, to save time they won't include stop words in the search. Consider a search in Google for:

The Edinburgh Tattoo

When Google serves up its results it also warns

"The" is a very common word and was not included in your search."

You can force Google to do a search that includes "The" by searching for;

+The Edinburgh Tattoo

or by surrounding the search in quotation marks;

"The Edinburgh Tattoo"

Chances are people will search without the + or quotation marks so it makes sense to use few stop words in your title and free up as much space as possible for relevant terms.

AltaVista, Inktomi and Google support stop words.