Typo Googling: The next big thing
February 23, 2004 10:50 PM
I got a funny email from Tristan Louis today: He was typo Googling his name and found that I mentioned him in a blog entry about who reads my blog, but his name was spelled wrong. I fixed it, and it gave me an idea....
Today Google suggests the correct spelling of words you search for but happen to spell wrong. To take this awesome feature a step further, Google should suggest popular typo variations as alternative searches when you happen to spell the search terms correctly.
Example 1: Misspellings. Bloggers, press, and coworkers often spell my name wrong, leaving off the last e in Greene. If was to Google for Dylan Greene, Google would suggest also searching for Dylan Green.
Example 2: Spacing. The company I work for is called webMethods, but it is often written as Web Methods. When searching for webMethods google would suggest "Web Methods" as an alternative.
Example 3: Ordering. Canon's latest digital SLR is officially called the Canon 300D in the US, but their previous model was called the D30, so people often mistype 300D as D300. A search for 300D would suggest D300 as an alternative.
Example 4: Wrong Word. I meant to search for wiring but instead typed wriring. Apparently wriring is a word too, so Google didn't suggest any alternatives. Even though wriring is a word it knows about, Google should suggest the far-more-popular word wiring as an alternative.
Thanks for the idea, Tristan! This make sense to anybody else?
Note: If you search Google today for "Typo Googling" there are no matches. I'm looking forward to searching again in a couple weeks or months to see if people use the term. Meanwhile, Typo Google your name and blog the results. Find anything interesting?
Comments
Related Posts
Category: Google
- First match on Google in just a couple days September 13, 2006 2:02:00 PM
- Google vs Yahoo June 8, 2005 11:59:00 PM
- MSN Virtual Earth to take on Google Maps May 24, 2005 11:59:00 AM
- Google suspends downloads of Google Web Accelerator May 12, 2005 1:34:00 AM
- Google Web Accelerator - Let Google Watch You Do Everything... May 5, 2005 3:20:00 AM
- 15 more in Google...
Category: Ideas
- Problems with Web 2.0, and how to fix them for Web 3.0 March 29, 2006 5:08:00 PM
- Automatic Bull-Sh*t detector extension for email, blogs, and browsers March 3, 2006 4:55:00 PM
- IE and Firefox feature request: download visible images first April 12, 2005 2:09:00 PM
- Shift-click needs more power April 12, 2005 12:25:00 AM
- Fun ways to do your taxes April 6, 2005 7:59:00 PM
- 32 more in Ideas...
http://diegov.blogspot.com
Posted February 24, 2004 10:05 PM
It makes sense to me. I like your approach but maybe Google could make a single typo search or fuzzy search suggestion for finding all typo originated results in once place. Is that ok?
Examining my referrers statistics some days ago I was stunned to see how many visitors came to my blog after mistyping some word in a Google search. I make lots of typos because English is not my mothers tongue, so I guess I need to do better spellchecking. But I have been wondering if it makes sense for Google to do something about it too.