Search engine spellings?

[shane Powell]

Hi, can anybody tell me how a search engine defines "correct" spelling etc.

I'm UK based and am doing some keyword analysis, and am wondering if the English spelling (UK) would be brushed aside in favour of the "US" spelling?

For example "Favour UK" may not attract as many searches as "favor US" might?


Any ideas?

[Dave Callahan]

Would it depend on which country the site ur visiting? I.E., thisone.com (U.S.) & thisone.co (Other countries)??

[wright_david1]

To very broadly answer your question at first, the search volume in the US is larger than in the UK so if that were the only factor, the US spelling would dominate.

That's not the only factor, because search engines do try to deliver results at least somewhat based on your location. For example, if you're in London and searching for "Carpenter", you'll get more London-based carpenters in your results. If you're in Manchester and searching for "London carpenter" you'll see results around London.

Since Google and the other major search engines are striving to deliver more personalized results, if you're in the UK and hoping to attract UK-based visitors, "favour" would be more relevant.

Go with the spelling used by your target market. If you're a local business such as a doctor, you'll want to be found by people near your office. If you're selling items worldwide, you may be better off using the more common spelling - though that may be much more competitive and harder to rank highly for that term.

[florie]

You can try keyword research using tools like SEMRush. They have this interface there where you can filter out the keyword search based on location.

For example:

If your keyword is "Favour UK", you can see the impressions both for the US and UK market. From that, you can already see which keywords are being searched more. That way, you can choose different variations of keywords to use for your site in order to make it rank.

[Barney]

Hi Shane!

As you know Google is a mysterious creature And no one really knows what it wants.
First, you could try to do keyword research using both UK and US spelling and see if there is a difference. That should be a good place to start.

In case you website targets both the US and UK audience, you could probably include both spellings.

Good luck!