It’s hard to tell how effective this use of synonym matching might be in paid search, or even in organic search. I would expect though, that there’s probably a great deal of testing going on by the search engines. If they do expand broad match in this way, and it results in few clicks or conversions, that could potentially cause advertisers to consider other ways of advertising.

To queries like this will modified broad-match be very good!

Expanding queries to include synonyms creates the possibility of a wider range of results that might show up in the top results at Google.

If the synonyms are good matches, then it could possibly be a good thing for people searching for information, as well as site owners who offer what a searcher is looking for, but didn’t use the same words on their pages that the searcher used to find them in his or her query.

I hate bringing LSI into any conversation about SEO, because it’s so often misunderstood and misapplied.

Using synonyms and related terms in copy and in anchor text is more common sense and good practice rather than anything else, and it potentially broadens the terms that a page might be found for. But this patent filing isn’t suggesting that people writing copy use synonyms or related words in their content; rather than the search engine might explore user data to see if there might be some relationships between the usage of words in certain contexts that may make them more likely to be synonyms.

I agree – I’d rather see related terms offered as query refinements (like the “did you mean XXXX” or “Try also XXXX”).

It’s always been smart to identify synonyms for candidate keywords, and attempt to choose wisely, and then find ways to include synonyms on pages too, if possible. I’m not sure that there’s any set of rules to follow that will fit in all circumstances. I suspect that it’s often going to be on an individual keyword/keyphrase basis.

For instance, most people may use “Fort Worth” referring to the City in Texas, and most people may use “Ft. Pierce” referring to the City in Florida. Using both “Ft.” and “Fort” on pages for each likely won’t make any difference at all if Google decides to expand a query to use the synonym. Optimizing as well as possible for the best choice is a better bet.

It’s interesting seeing how and where ideas spread. And as you note, how people might react to changes differently over time. I think there are people still put off by many of the things that can be done with a phone today.

Search will definitely look very different in 20 years. It may look very different in 2-3 years.