Misspelled Words in Search Engines

Google states that 10% of all searches made on Google are mistyped or misspelled. What if you could take advantage of all the search engine traffic for common misspellings in your field, or even those impossible to get keywords or phrases? I did more research into this matter using Overture keyword selector and found that the keyword search term “googl” receives 42,797 hits per month.

Targeting the best possible key terms is of critical importance. The misspelled words in search engines let you take advantage traffic that is less targeted by your competitors. There are two SEO tactics for taking advantage of this optimization for misspelled words and registering domains for those misspelling and then redirect them to your main domain.

On Wednesday May 23, 2007, Yahoo! Buzz has published a post on the twenty most misspelled searches on Yahoo! search engine.

 Top 20 misspelled keywords within Yahoo Search:

1. Rachel Ray (Rachael Ray)
2. Tatoos (Tattoos)
3. Scarlett Johanson (Scarlett Johansson)
4. Wierd Al Yankovic (Weird Al Yankovic)
5. Evanesence (Evanescence)
6. Soduku (Sudoku)
7. Barbara Streisand (Barbra Streisand)
8. Louis Vitton (Louis Vuitton)
9. Jamie Presley (Jaime Pressly)
10. Jimmy Buffet (Jimmy Buffett)
11. Brittany Spears (Britney Spears)
12. Brittney Spears (ibid)
13. Anna Nichole Smith (Anna Nicole Smith)
14. Eva Mendez (Eva Mendes)
15. Jessica Beil (Jessica Biel)
16. The Biggest Looser (The Biggest Loser)
17. Jennifer Anniston (Jennifer Aniston)
18. Marie Antionette (Marie Antoinette)
19. Mercedez Benz (Mercedes Benz)
20. Micheal Jordan (Michael Jordan)

Do you included misspelled keywords in your site? If not should you start including them? The answer is yes, but of course there are some draw backs to actually optimizing theses keywords in your posts. The predicament is the fact that this type of optimization will look unprofessional to your readers. A work around could be when using misspelling is to use the stright out like I’ve done below, I’m sure you’ve noticed it on sites before.

Methods that are not noticed by the reader; purchasing misspelled domains and adding misspellings in your keyword meta-tags, helps for Yahoo and Ask.  

Check out yourDictionary.com because they have a library of the 100 most often mispelled misspelled words in English.

October 18, 2007 | posted in The Net 

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25 Responses to “Misspelled Words in Search Engines”

  1. John Kain on October 18th, 2007

    Nice tip about maximizing traffic.

  2. Music Dictionary on October 18th, 2007

    I have been seeing such entries in many blogs and was wondering why the blogger would not simply delete the wrongly spelled entry.
    Incidentally, your list shows only proper nouns. I have been seeing regularly used words deliberately shown as you have.
    Thanks for enlightening me.

  3. April on October 18th, 2007

    you can always have the anchor text a miss-spelling buy creating a squidoo lens or ezinearticle.

  4. Jane on October 19th, 2007

    It is funny when sometimes you look at your analytics and find how many people find you website because of i a misspelled word, mmm and then it hits you, he found me because I misspelled “banana” lol

  5. HiFi Guy on October 21st, 2007

    I thought it was Jamie Presley before i see the movie Dead or Alive…

  6. soj on October 22nd, 2007

    I did some research into this and ran a test a while back on my blog, here are the posts regarding it ;)

  7. El Yanqui on October 22nd, 2007

    I use my analytics as a sort of after the fact spell checker. When I see someone came from a misspelled word-oops, gotta go fix that.

    I haven’t thought too much about actually attempting to optimize that happening.

  8. Wedding-Master on October 22nd, 2007

    NIce thought.Thanks.

  9. prank videos on October 23rd, 2007

    I never actually targeted misspelled keywords, but I wondered before how could that be exploited. Yep, I’m gonna do some research to use this in my advantage.

  10. John on October 25th, 2007

    So, I should incorrectly spell words on my site for 10% of the search market when I’m getting even more than that now?

  11. Jason Neuman on October 25th, 2007

    The incorrect spelling of Googl receives over 43,000 hits per month. If you were to say able to get indexed for that key term and receive just 10% of that traffic that would be 4300 hits per month off just one article.

    The full picture, so over a site’s lifetime of getting index and from time getting indexed for an incorrect spelling with a high traffic rate can significantly increase your overall traffic -regardless if you are already receives 300,000 + hits per month or even a day.

  12. Life is Colourful on October 28th, 2007

    And yes, I started seeing the implementation in your latest posts ;)

  13. Toronto SEO on October 30th, 2007

    I have had the same feelings. Why do people write English in another language?

  14. Jason on November 2nd, 2007

    Great traffic information tip!

  15. SFK on November 8th, 2007

    I couldn’t agree more that if you optimize for misspelled words, you would surely appear to be less professional. But, I guess it really depends on the type of website you operate. If you have a service industry website and wish to maintain a professional reputation, you wouldn’t be to enthusiastic about optimizing ‘Pheonix’ (Phoenix).

  16. Rice Blogger on November 9th, 2007

    hehe..ibid?

  17. News Bandit on November 28th, 2007

    That is a great tip for getting some extra traffic from Google. Thanks!

  18. David on December 4th, 2007

    That is a very clever idea! I am going to try out overture and see what I can find for my niche.

    I wonder could you use tags and stuff or would these alone not be enough to get you up the google (googl!) natural search?

  19. Paul on December 11th, 2007

    Kelly, did you see I posted on your side of the blog? I think I tried to use a sudo name. lol My girlfriend is always telling me that I am not as funny as i think i am.

  20. Jason Neuman on December 12th, 2007

    Hi Paul! How are you? I turned off my comments because I used to get too many celebrity werid fans and if they did not like what I put they used to be rude and to be honest I could not be bothered to moderate all comments. But thanks for taking the time to try and comment on my site. I actually visited your site the other day looking at house prices.

  21. Paul on December 12th, 2007

    Oh I see. I am glad that you visited my website, what did you think? You guys don’t live in Arizona right? Are you planning on moving or just curious. Either way thank you for the visit. Are you excited for your man to come home? :)

  22. web design on February 22nd, 2008

    Very nice tip, but it’s so true about the proffesional look. Seems like those who could make the max out of those mispelled keywords are mfa sites.

  23. Gadgets4nowt on February 22nd, 2008

    I didn’t think that Google worried too much about keyword tags these days, so does that mean your title, description and tags would need to contain all the typos as well?

    I spell “tattoo” wrong as well !

  24. DUI on February 23rd, 2008

    Striking out the misspelled words is a huge tip I hadn’t thought of. Thanks!

    What do you think about creating entire pages just for misspelled words? Like have one page on “Bass Fishing” and another on “Bas Fishing”? It would take twice the work, but it could be worth it.

    :O)

  25. Nascar Diecast Cars on April 5th, 2008

    That is a really great list of misspelled words. I am amazed when I look at my stats and see the misspelling that lead people to my blogs.

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