quoted_search_resulta_jaaxyOne of the aspects of keyword research that boggles many new affiliate marketers is the idea of QSR, or quoted search results, that appear for a given phrase.

If you’re not used to analyzing keyword competition, this is an understandable confusion, since it differs from the way in which we normally search and evaluate search in the course of our everyday lives.

In this post I’ll give a little background on the idea of QSR and why it’s an important indicator of keyword competition.

What is a Quoted Search Result?

QSR, which stands for quoted search results, is one of the best, fastest measures of keyword competition you can use.

This metric refers to the number of exact matches that are returned for a given search.

Looking for exact matches is not always second nature, since when we search (as humans) for a phrase, we tend not to care about the exact wording of the phrase, but rather the intent implied.

This means that we implicitly understand things like variations in prepositions, articles, plurality, and synonyms that a search engine cannot (yet) grasp.

For example, to a person, the following phrases appear extremely similar:

  • Best life jacket babies
  • Best life vest for a baby
  • Best life vests for babies
  • Best life jacket for infant
  • Best life jacket for an infant

You get the idea. There are tons of variations on this phrase that are more or less the same…to us. You can access this data easily with a keyword tool like Jaaxy.

The catch is, these phrases are all very different to the search engines.

Why QSR is Important

QSR is important because of the way search engines index and comprehend data.

While there are major improvements in semantic technology happening, we’re still a ways off from truly intelligent machines. In the meantime, machines are basically just good at pattern detection and counting.

Keyword, to a computer, are just a series of bits. You remember the matrix, right? All those zeros and ones flying across the screen? That’s how computers understand data.

That means that even small variations in phrases will disrupt the ‘pattern’ a certain keyword represents, and has the ability of the computer to recognize that pattern as being related to another pattern somewhere else.

That’s why the QSR figure is important.

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