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When I was searching for the sentence "SEO interview questions and answers for experienced" in Google.co.in I found so many results with the title "SEO interview questions and answers for fresher", and it is also highlighting the word "Fresher" in the results page.

I know that Google would show results by using the meaning of the keyword, but in this case "Experienced" and "Fresher" are entirely opposite in meaning, as well as in the difficulty of questions (i.e., Question difficulty would be different for freshers and experienced people) in those websites.

Google can show these pages if it was not able to find results related to the term "Experienced", but there are so many sites displayed in the returned pages having the term "Experience" in the <title> tag.

My Question is:

Why is Google.co.in providing results with antonyms of a main keyword? Why is it considering those opposite keywords?

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    This question is not about your own website. Rather it is about Google search results.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jan 9, 2014 at 13:28
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    With "experienced" being the last (7th) word in the search phrase it would seem to carry less weight. If you move "experienced" to the start of your search phrase then the "fresher" results seem to drop from the SERPs. (However, that doesn't really explain why "fresher" is actively highlighted in the first instance.)
    – MrWhite
    Jan 9, 2014 at 13:35
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    @StephenOstermiller This actually does pertain to the search results related to their website (note the author of the first result).
    – dan ♦
    Jan 9, 2014 at 14:43

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A fresher is somebody with little experience, so you are correct, Google is showing results that mean exactly the opposite of what you want.

Google uses algorithms to automatically determine what words mean based on their usage. Their algorithm has determined that "fresher" means "experienced" rather than "inexperienced".

Bugs like this in Google algorithms should be reported to Google via the Google WebSearch Product Forum: Unexpected Search Results. You get the best response if you use a specific title for your post such as

Search with 'experienced' returns antonym results containing: 'freshers'

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    To me "freshman" means "inexperienced", which is the exact opposite of "experienced".
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jan 9, 2014 at 14:50
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    The context is all wrong too. If I search for "advanced techniques" I don't want results focused on "search 101", or "newbie techniques".
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jan 9, 2014 at 14:54
  • @StephenOstermiller Thanks a lot. I didn't expect these much response from the top contributors :)
    – User
    Jan 9, 2014 at 15:43
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Why is Google.co.in showing and highlighting antonyms of a keyword in search results?

I don't see any evidence here that Google is highlighting "antonyms of a keyword" in these search results. It's simply highlighting the content from the page returned that most closely matches your search terms either from the Meta description, or body if that's missing, as appears to be the case in the top result.

Why is Google.co.in providing results with antonyms of a main keyword? Why is it considering those opposite keywords?

The term "freshers" isn't defined in some dictionaries like Websters, however it seems to be defined by Google.co.in as an informal term for "freshman" (i.e., first year college students). Therefore this isn't an antonym or opposite of the keyword "experienced".

It's not unexpected however that you'd see other keywords appearing in search engine snippets if also found within the content Google used for the snippet, as is the case with the top result above.

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    "Fresher" is very common in the UK too. Google's own dictionary (search "define fresher") shows it to be a synonym of "freshman" which I believe is the usual term in America.
    – DisgruntledGoat
    Jan 9, 2014 at 10:36
  • Whilst "freshers" may not be a strict antonym of "experienced", it is a long way from being a synonym and it is actively highlighted in the SERPs which indicates that the word is a match for the phrase searched for - this would seem to be incorrect to me. (?) Maybe Google is determining that a first year undergraduate is sufficiently "experienced" in this context?!
    – MrWhite
    Jan 9, 2014 at 13:27
  • @w3d I believe that's what I said: that it was highlighting the content most closely matching the search terms, but not highlighting a word opposite in meaning of "experienced" (i.e., an antonym). It's up to Google to derive meanings from context, which it's not infallible at doing.
    – dan ♦
    Jan 9, 2014 at 14:31
  • Well, you seem to be suggesting that it is OK for Google to have highlighted the word "fresher" in this instance, whereas I'm saying it's not. "Fresher" is not a close match for "experienced" in any context. In fact thesaurus.com does define "experienced" as an antonym of "fresher". Google's derived meaning would appear to be incorrect IMO.
    – MrWhite
    Jan 9, 2014 at 15:18
  • @w3d I don't think I said it was OK, just attempting to explain that it's up to Google to derive meaning from the context it finds. We can't really expect exact search results all the time.
    – dan ♦
    Jan 9, 2014 at 15:26

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