How you spell a keyword will impact your search results. A misspelled keyword may return very few or even zero results. On the other hand, some misspellings are so common they still return a large number of results. This happens because search engines obediently return web pages with exact matches of a misspelled word. If you get enough misspelled results you may not even realize you are missing pages with the correct spelling. There are also European and American variations in spelling that can change the results of your search. Also what about capitalization? Will the case change between European and european make a difference in your search results? Clearly, when it comes to searching spelling counts!

Here's an example of how spelling and searching interact:

• Try searching for Shakespear on Google. This spelling returns about 52,000 hits.
• Try searching for Shakespeare on Google. This spelling returns 3,000,000 hits.

What a difference an 'e' makes!

If you begin refining your search based on a variant spelling like Shakespear, you eliminate important web resources that match the more popular spelling of Shakespeare's name. In other words, you miss important, relevant information. Still, don’t presume that pages using an alternate spelling are of no value. Ultimately it is the content of the resource, rather than the spelling that counts.

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Authored by Dennis O'Connor 2003-2004