Why Google Just Can’t Suggest
Monday, May 3, 2010 10:57 | Short URL for this post: http://hud.gs/bvuhjPart 4 – The “Did you mean” search corrections
Google has offered spelling corrections for a long time. On many occasions I’ve used Google to check the spelling of words, as it’s a quick and convenient way to do so. If you’re interested in the internal workings of how spelling correction originally worked on Google, go knock yourself out by reading this detailed analysis.
The key thing that plays a part in spelling corrections nowadays is the number of returned results, although search volume is also a significant factor. However, like Google Suggest, there’s a real lack of localisation with this system as well and corrections are based on the global number of returned pages, which causes the same kind of problems we’ve already seen with Google Suggest.
Just to add further complication, there’s also a significant degree of manual intervention at Google’s end. Why? Because the system cocks up so regularly that they needed a way to stop corrections being shown in certain circumstances.
The two types of Google corrections
There are two main types of Google search corrections. Type 1 still returns results for what you searched for, but gives you a very strong hint that you should change:
It’s usually not the end of the world if you’re optimising for a term that gets this treatment, although you will see a marked drop in traffic from people thinking they’ve searched for the wrong thing.
Type 2 simply tells you you’ve searched for the wrong thing and barely gives the user a choice in the matter:
If you’re optimising for a term that receives this treatment, then you are royally in trouble as the click through for the “search instead” link is virtually non-existent.
Case 1 – Search Engine Optimisation
This was the term that caused all the fuss in January. Searching for search engine optimisation gave an automatic type 2 correction to search engine optimization. Obviously this caused quite a stir in the UK SEO world, but after a bit of the aforementioned manual intervention, all was well.
So why did it change? Due to the keyword-circle-of-death I mentioned earlier. Google Suggest forced up the volume of searches for search engine optimization and consequently a great many sites started to optimise for this variant of the term instead of the “English” version. 9 or 10 months later, the combined effect of this was sufficient to trigger Google into thinking that search engine optimisation was a spelling mistake. Way to go Google.
Case 2 – Targeted
This is a bit of a strange one that’s worth mentioning. A common spelling mistake of targeted is targetted. Google Suggest picks this up when you type:
In addition, when you look at the global keyword volume for this term, it’s pretty clear which is the correct spelling:
The correct spelling returns nearly 60 times the number of results; a very strong indicator that it’s the correct version.
Yet when you search on both Google.com and Google UK for the term targetted, no spelling correction is offered. Incidentally, the term targetted returns 817,000 results, less than 29,800,000 returned for search engine optimisation (which did receive a spelling correction at one time) so it’s not like the incorrect spelling features on too many pages to be deemed a mistake.
So why does Google not provide a correction? A bad ”hand job” perhaps? Honestly, I’m not sure on this one. All it does show is that the search corrections system is still far from perfect.
In conclusion
I could give more examples of bad search corrections, but I think you get the picture. Hopefully you’ve also learnt a little about Google Suggest from this post, which in my view is the biggest unreported issue with Google today. Don’t forget, if you’re not an SEO and don’t need to see suggestions, you can turn off Google Suggest in your account preferences. I’d certainly advise doing so; you’ll be helping to save the English language!
The primary reason Google Suggest and search corrections fall down so badly for UK users is due to a complete lack of localisation. This is something Google needs to address sooner rather than later if they really believe in providing the best user experience they continue to promise. But will they actually ever fix this? Personally, I’m not holding my breath.
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I absolutely love the fact you’ve pointed out how AdWords’ keyword tool has no basis in reality! And thanks very much for the backink – glad you liked the post!
Very interesting. On to of my post you mentioned earlier, I did one pointing to the creeping Americanisation of spellings in UK searches.
Looking at the graphs again (for as long as WordPress deigns not to strip the javascript …), you can see a definite acceleration of the trend in May 2009 (for donut / doughnut) and June 2009 for yogurt / yoghurt – which would suggest that Google suggest might be having an effect. I’m not sure what’s happening with the doughnuts, but as I start typing yoghurt, all Google’s suggestions are for yogurt.
Doh. With the yoghurt thing, that was because I had already searched for it once and so it had personalised Google Suggest when I searched again. In fact, when you start typing yoghurt, you get a bunch of yoga suggestions. So it’s difficult to see how Google could be influencing the spelling (you get to yog and then you have to choose h or u as the next letter – but there’s no obvious leaning on one direction in what Google suggests at that point, due to the yoga stuff). Still, the timing looks suspicious – the acceleration of the trend is shortly after Suggest launched in the UK.
Thanks for your thoughts Malcolm (and the retweet). It’s a very good point that personalisation plays a key factor in suggested searches (as listed on this Google help page) so I was careful to make sure I was signed out, history cleared and so on when testing.
For terms like doughnut and yoghurt which haven’t suffered “suggestion merging” with their US counterparts, Google Suggest should weight the English spelling more highly on Google UK and in theory avoid any issues. Although it’s also true that it won’t attempt to correct US spellings of these terms, so people searching for yogurt on Google UK will be non-the-wiser that maybe they ought to be searching for yoghurt.
Did you see the xkcd colour survey? They’d used google to check the spelling of fuchsia … and hence got it wrong. It corrects to fuschia (and if you start typing that, it shows fuschia as a suggestion so you’ll think it’s right). And as you start typing fuscia (if you’re really unsure), it suggests fuschia. Hmm. I feel sorry for the owner of fuschiadesigns.co.uk …
Excellent post Jon, and thank you for the reference to my earlier piece.
I have a client within the personalised gifts sector, which was one of the main catalysts to my interest. I can completely support your case 4. research as we have seen a similar rise on volume for personalized [keyword] in their sector; thus the suggestion becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Luckily we saw this coming and opimised accordingly, so I don’t feel too bad about it from a business perspective; however as a Mum part of me is pissed that this half-assed approach to suggestive assistance, clearly leads to homogeneity in language and culture.
I don’t know… maybe this increased internationalisation of culture isn’t such a bad thing, and we’re just naturally resistant to change?
Thanks for your comments Nichola and the insights from your own research. It’s a very fair point that internationalisation might not be such a bad thing; it would certainly make life easier if all English words were spelt the same wherever you were in the world!
Having said that, I still don’t feel Google should be deciding our fate for us. Perhaps they are just accelerating the inevitable, or perhaps they’re creating a problem that might never have existed, I don’t know.
I guess the other thing to consider is at what point would the internationalisation of English “stop”? Do I want to be walking down the sidewalk to buy a pink colored donut at my local grocery store next fall? No ta!
A bigger problem, IMHO, is when Google Suggest throws up ungrammatical suggestions. “Did you mean ‘Why is Google so ingrammatical?’” Believe!