Google "Did you mean" vs "Search instead for"
Flying fingers mean typos, and Google offers two ways of handling spelling mistakes in its search results.
Search instead for…. means Google has anticipated what you meant with your incorrect spelling. It auotcorrects your spelling, and presents search results with the correctly spelled search phrase, with the option to rerun your search with your incorrect spelling. In this example I have misspelled the word solicitor, and Google has taken the decision to present the results with the correct spelling:
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I’m more familiar with Google searching for my incorrect spellling, and presenting the mispelled results. In those instances if offers me the option to rerun my search with the option “Did you mean…”
Some interesting questions to ask:
- Have you investigated the spelling mistakes Google recognises, and incorporate it into your SEO strategy?
- Will Google changing the way I typed in my search in any way change the intention of my search? Skew my search results?
- What implications does this have for SEO? What words does Google “know”the correct spelling for? And what implications does this have for SEO companies optimising for mispellings?
This post was written by Susan Hallam - 
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One Response to “Google "Did you mean" vs "Search instead for"”
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Hi Susan, I don’t think this only affects spelling mistakes. Our domain name is written in the following form: betterlanguages.com (i.e. as a single word). When the domain was new, it came up as a spelling mistake in the Google results. Its very annoying if people are deliberately searching for you and can’t find you! The way we addressed this over time was to include some optimisation for “better languages” as two separate words. It worked, and we now rank top on the phrase, (even more proof of the importance of the domain name in search results), the BBC site previously ranked top for the phrase, and it isn’t very easy to unseat such a powerful site. Anyhow, my point is this, when choosing a new domain name it may be worth considering that Google might treat it as a misspelling so that it doesn’t show in the results. Of course you may not want to optimise on your business name, in which case it isn’t a problem, but I would suggest that most businesses would want to rank on their own name as well as other chosen keywords.
Kindest regards
Mike