Last week, Google caused quite an uproar in the SEO community when it decided to tweak its engine’s spelling. In fact, several big SEO bloggers made mention about Google’s spelling and the Americanizing of search results.
(Tracy)
Now, as a copywriter, these results were almost as good as sending me a bouquet of flowers. Almost. I love mysteries, I switch between UK, US, Canadian, and Australian spellings frequently, and combining them with search just made the phenomenon that much more fun.
So, after a pretty heavy-duty chat with some smart people and a bit of digging, I’ve come up with some interesting explanations. (It’s my understanding that Google has changed its mind on some of these, but I thought it was worth a look regardless.)
Optimizing for Optimisation
The initial word pair to cause a ruckus was ‘search engine optimisation‘, which brings up ‘search engine optimization‘ results. Hmmm! Knowing full well that Google is moving towards producing more relevant and local results, this was completely puzzling.
I initially thought the switch was due to Adwords revenue. I mean, there’s bound to be more people including ‘optimization’ in their PPC campaigns than ‘optimisation’ right? And more competition means the CPC would be higher right?
Well, after a short discussion with a few SEOs including David Harry, I took off the tin foil and discovered it was pretty easy to see why. Google Trends and Insights both show Britons are searching for ‘optimization’ more frequently and UK SEOs are targeting the ‘z’ when optimizing their sites, so Google is giving people what they want.
Don’t Forget About the User
Malcolm Coles dug up a number of other good examples. He noticed that, when searching for ‘whether’, ‘weather’ results were shown with the definition of ‘whether’ in #1 and BBC weather being second. I don’t know about you, but this looks right to me as a user, an SEO, and as a writer. Here’s why:
If I were searching for ‘whether’ without any additional words in the query, chances are I would be looking for what part of speech it is, what synonyms are available, how it’s used and other word mechanics. Otherwise, what would the intent be?
In Malcolm’s screen cap, you can clearly see the first result (Dictionary.com’s definition) would satisfy this need nicely. If I wasn’t looking for the word’s mechanics and had meant to look for ‘weather’, this need is satisfied with the BBC weather result in second place. I have the same opinion of ‘stationary vs stationery’ and ‘license vs. licence’ and think the spelling causes confusion among regular users more than some people think.
Could A Combination of Signals Trigger Different Results?
(Alexbrn)
The results Malcolm got for ‘colouring vs coloring’ were quite fascinating. Google Insights and Google Trends both show UK users search for ‘colouring’ more than ‘coloring’, but they also show the u-less form is gaining slightly in popularity while the ‘u’ form of the word is decreasing.
When I did a search for ‘colouring’ and ‘coloring’ through .co.uk, I noticed only the ‘u’ page was affected, and in fact, 6/10 results were optimized for the ‘u’ form or both. I’m sure this will vary for everyone, but still, we can see the results are mixed.
This leaves me with user data. I know my son is a huge fan of Disney, Pixar, and other popular cartoon-like movies, so I can’t see UK children being much different. I wonder if a higher number of clicks on some of that content have something to do with it? I’d say so.
Lastly, we know Google is starting to recognize relative terms. After all, some pages I’ve optimized for ‘copywriting’ on my site rank better for ‘copywriter’ and vice versa. In the end, if I were searching for ‘coloring’, or ‘colouring’ for that matter, what exactly would I be looking for? And don’t the results satisfy that request? Not saying the big G is perfect, but it doesn’t seem to be as horrible as some would like to think.
What Does This Mean?
After looking at the various SERPs, I can’t help but think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this very soon. And, if SEOs want to compete, they may want to include these ideas in the planning of their future optimization projects. I also think SEOs will need to spend more time considering the user and what they might be doing rather than focusing on numbers alone (this is not to say that some don’t already do so).
As much as I will likely get roasted for this, I have to say that I think these changes are a good thing for the user and will force webmasters and SEOs to put a lot more thought into the sites they work on. That’s never a bad thing.
21 Comments on "Are You Optimising for Optimization? Google Spells Drive SEOs Crazy"
VERY neat round up Angie
However I still don’t think Google results should be affected just because a lot of Americans spell something one way and a lot of Brits type it in to see where they rank on this ‘US’ terminology lol (I’m taking the seo term).
Opinion of course, but great roundup…
Hi Shaun,
Being a Canadian, I completely understand where you’re coming from, but I also think understand why it’s being done. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one for the time being lol
Angie,
Thank you for chiming in with a copywriter’s perspective! You definitely have given me new food for thought, and at the very least, I can see a bigger picture, though your implication is that more people lack spelling skills than I’d realized.
And that in itself has the potential to cause the SEO community to need more time in keyword research than might otherwise have been given in the past.
Hi Alan,
I really think so. I often lose site of what the regular user does, but when I need a refresher, I just go to a friend or relative’s place. It’s amazing to see how much different I’ve become simply because of my chosen profession. As my loving mother says, ‘I don’t use that Google thing’
Good Article. Instead of spending time understanding search engine algorithms, it is ideal to focus on understanding what a user has in mind with regarding before choosing keywords.
Hi George,
Don’t get me wrong, you have to understand the basics of search engines and how those companies operate to use SEO effectively. I think we just lose perspective sometimes. That being said, the user should ALWAYS be the main focus, in my opinion.
Good article thanks. Gives renewed thoughts to future English language variations which I agree must be great for the users…
Hi Angie,
Thanks for the comment on the SEO-Chicks post.
It’s great to get a copywriter perspective and a fresh set eyes on this.I was really interested to read that you often switch between what could be thought of as US, UK, Australian etc. spellings in general English usage. I imagine this is because you provide your services globally and tailor your tone (via spelling or cultural norms) according to your core audience???
I also think your point about Disney/Pixar etc is interesting. It leads me to think about house-rules and brand guidelines and how perhaps spelling is less relevant when a global brand may have its own dictionary that crosses borders.
In terms of national identity and culture, I guess the fear is that a difference which should be celebrated, risks being diluted. On the other hand about 60% of our TV is US (CSI, Law and Order, Ugly Betty, The Hills, Glee; yet still ‘the kidz’ know we say pavement and you say sidewalk!
Hi Nichola,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Being Canadian, we often joke about being ‘little America’ simply because so much of our music, television, movies, and other cultural factors are American. However, we still have a rich (and thriving) music scene, amazing Canadian movies, etc. I think that, so long as we embrace our cultural differences in addition to enjoying all of the wonderful things the Americans produce, I think we’ll be fine for many generations to come. (Besides, I think us Canucks would be the first to go lol).
All joking aside, I think brand and popularity has a lot to do with what we’re seeing. After all, Google is about making money and providing users with what they’re looking for, not telling them ‘no’ because they’re Britons, Canadians, Australians, etc. I think it’s an element of globalization that many of us hadn’t thought of previously. There were also Google updates last year that played right into this.
And yes, because my clients span the globe, I switch between the styles as much as possible in order to blend flawlessly with their other work. Otherwise, my clients would end up with a wonderful British website and a very American sounding brochure, for example
(You’ll find that on my site, I write mostly in American. This is simply because that’s where a large portion of my market and my customer base is located. I think it makes them feel more comfortable, and like Canadians, Australians, and Britons, they get quite upset to see someone messing with their language, particularly a professional!)
Thanks Nichola!
Angie
Angie,
Very interesting post. I think it’s very intriguing how Google is influencing [potentially] global usage of language. From an SEO perspective, Google has been serving up “synonyms” for search results for quite some time. I’ve found targeting on-page optimi”z”ation for the most-searched (or highest converting) term still the best rule-of-thumb. Lastly, for me personally (as a “searcher” and not an “seo-er”) sometimes Google search results baffle me; which is why I’ve started using Bing.com and have found success
I think Google’s influence of language is a bit unexpected. (I too thought it may be a move toward standardization, which didn’t make any sense because spelling would be a factor in providing geographically relevant results.)
Interesting that you switched to Bing. I’ll admit that I’ve tried several times and find it’s lack of usability and ecommerce laden results quite frustrating. Then again, I’m generally looking for informative sites as opposed to shopping or entertainment.
Thanks Angie for your comments. I design websites and I also sell antiques online which means I am constantly searching for research on those items. Spelling and search have conflicted with the “did you mean…” lots of times. I do use Google most often & have started using Bing with relavant results for both & sometimes really farrout results when I find a ancient document that has been scanned in that refers to an item or the manufacturer of that item. Building a page for every item or groups of like items has helped me think of options I would use to search for those items. Plus using a logger like Sitemeter that shows search words helps me “think like a buyer” even if they can’t spell
I make it a point to tag every page differently for my own 2 sites & all of my clients – it’s just good business.
I’m actually impressed that Google is making a correlation between spelling variants and returning the same results for what really is the same query.
I don’t see any justification for being roasted on your feedback, it is fairly non-biased and well-researched.
Google Wave attempted to blend the language barrier with Rosy, a language extension. I knew eventually it would blend into the engine’s natural search results.
The more important question I think is the adoption of this spelling consistency with the other engines. Will they jump on the train or still require us to optimize for different spelling variations?
@Steve
Yes, Google seems to have a history of testing different types of ideas and technologies in other formats before bringing it into the mainstream (thank goodness!). As for the other engines, I have yet to investigate it, but usually, what one does, the other two aren’t far behind. I guess, the best way to put it is: if the others aren’t, they will like be doing so shortly.
And yeah, the dorky side of me is pretty darn excited to see how it is mashing human and machine languages.
@100 organizing your site into themes is huge, not just for the SEs, but also for the user. After all, if I were to click the ‘office supplies’ section and end up having to dig through a bunch of bedroom sets, I’d be quite upset. Analytics play a huge role in learning how your audience thinks. The information is there. People simply need to learn how to use it!
As much as I find this intriguing what my advice don’t think too much. Think simple. Answers are right there.
If the search engines are changing there algorithm so be it. They are there to serve billions of visitors and not to serve thousands of SEOs.
Good article!
Great roundup
Thanks for the link too!
Very interesting post. We’ve posted an article recently about spelling in web pages and it’s the US/UK language debate that seems to have struck a chord (see link against my name if you want to join in)
i would like to know more information from the google its realy very helpfull.
I get confused. Stationary vs stationery, weather vs whether. I would not doubt that SEOs as well as average searchers will needs to start keeping a dictionary by the keyboard.
@Lanka I agree we often make some of these things more complex than they need to be. That being said, I’m a firm believer in the idea that, if you own a website or help others run theirs, you’d better know what’s going on with the SEs algos. And, if you can’t understand what motivates it, you can’t possibly know how to deal with the changes. SEO is like playing chess, you need to keep an eye on what’s going on or you’re going to be in check and it’ll be too late.
@Kieron Most welcome!
@Kevin We all get confused or have our mind wander at some point. And yeah, a thesaurus and a dictionary have taken up permanent residence on my computer desk. They’re old, but I still use them quite frequently.
I think Google’s influence of language is a bit unexpected. (I too thought it may be a move toward standardization, which didn’t make any sense because spelling would be a factor in providing geographically relevant results.)
Interesting that you switched to Bing. I’ll admit that I’ve tried several times and find it’s lack of usability and ecommerce laden results quite frustrating. Then again, I’m generally looking for informative sites as opposed to shopping or entertainment.