How's it spelled? Web search engines unscramble goofs
— -- "Swan Flu," "Brack Obama" and "Paperview boxing" are among the top misspelled words typed into the Yahoo search engines in the last month, says Yahoo buzz editor Vera Chan.
"These things jump out at us, especially when there is a breaking news story and (Yahoo users) want to follow up on a story," she says. "It's interesting to see the different variations of these spellings."
When misspelled words or phrases get typed into a search engine, the software sends a signal asking: "Did you mean …?"
Some of the most common misspellings, Chan says, occur when people use Yahoo to get to other websites such as "Mysapce," "utube," and "Gogle." And when a new phenomenon makes news, "this is when we notice things like 'swan flu' — it's almost like playing (a game of) telephone."
Mark Paskin, senior engineer at Google, also lists some commonly misspelled search words: definitely (most commonly misspelled definately, definetly, definatly); stilettos (stilletos, stillettos); convenient (convient, convienent, convinient); nauseous (nautious, nauseas, nausious); and mischievous (mischevious, mischievious).
There are two kinds of misspellings, Paskin says: typos and conceptual errors, in which users don't know how to spell a word.
"Before I started working on spelling correction, I thought that most misspellings would be typos, but I was surprised to learn that conceptual errors are very common. So Google's 'Did you mean …' feature is especially helpful," he says.
One particular misspelling that makes Paskin laugh is "u tube."
"Even though this can refer to a tube with a particular shape," he says, "users are almost always looking for YouTube.
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