Five years ago, some quick-witted entrepreneurs were able to capitalize on one of America’s greatest weaknesses: Spelling.
This won’t really come as a shock to most of you, but most Americans are poor spellers, and even poorer typists. In “our” field, this manifests itself in errant search queries:
Windws
Windoes
Windowes
Windoze
Cabinets
Cabinnets
Cabinettes
I see mis-spellings like this all the time on Google and the other search engines. And years ago, it used to make a difference in the search results. Google would actually show results for the mis-spelled words – not for the keywords that the user meant to search for.
Accordingly, it was profitable at that time to optimize a Web site or a Web page for that mis-spelled phrase or term. It was even sometimes worthwhile to buy mis-spelled domains like “replacmentwindows.com” in the hopes of securing Web traffic from related mis-spelled terms.
But times have changed. With billions of search queries each month across the world, Google has become much better about discerning the searcher’s intent – and understanding that we’re all terrible spellers.
Consider the screen snap below:
It shows search for a misspelling of the term “replacement windows,” a common mistake. And a mistake that Google now understands. Instead of showing the user a bunch of search results that would have matched the phrase exactly, Google matches the intent of the term.
So instead of a bunch of garbage search listings with the term “replacment windows” in them, Google correctly chooses to serve “replacement windows” results that the homeowner will find more relevant and helpful.
I see this more and more from the search engines, as they are clearly aware of our typing and spelling inadequacies. So, the opportunities online for capitalizing on our deficiencies is clearly much less than it was several years ago – meaning that you should spend your online time and budgets on other endeavors.
And, for an example of how we are learning to overcome our fear of spelling, check out this video of a spelling bee: