I’m saddened to think how our facilitation of successful Internet searches is enabling people to slip into illiteracy, and, worse yet, search engine optimization (SEO) is proactively driving down the lowest common denominator in vocabulary and language usage skills.
As just one example among many, how many ways can you misspell restaurant? Recent visitors who were searching one of our sites for sample business plans for eating establishments used these misspellings in their searches:
restaraunt
restauraunt
restaurent
resteraunt
restruant
restrunt
resturant
restuarant
Not getting any results, they also tried the plurals of these not-words by adding s and es as well. Maybe these were merely sloppy typing errors, or perhaps the searchers really do not know the correct spelling.
In a sad way it really doesn’t matter. Internet users are becoming less literate every day, and we are enabling them to do it. They don’t need to know how to spell correctly for a successful Internet search. Anything that is a close approximation of a word will do.
That is because we owners, hosts, developers, webmasters, and editors of websites collect, track, and analyze all these bad searches. Then we add the misspellings into keyword fields and other code, behind-the-website-scenes, so that from now on anyone who makes a half-hearted attempt at spelling will still arrive at our sites.
And truly, I can’t say this is wrong. Sad yes, but not wrong. With so many gazillion e-merchants out there, search engine optimization is essential to our success and survival. We must use every opportunity, every tool, every search to entice, suggest, direct, link, and otherwise bring potential customers in to our websites where we can sell them our products and services.
To continue with my example, now, at our same site, a search on any of those misspellings they will produce a list of free restaurant business sample plans, because I’ve added them all into the keyword search fields.
If you are not including misspelled search terms in your website’s SEO process you are missing out on connecting with many potential customers.
Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Yer post makes me crie. Whats the werld comming two?
Steve Lange,
Could it be that it is hard to spell the word due to the fact that is coming from the French language?!
It is time to “restore” the language! Have you heard about Marina of Hot For Words?
Thanks for you comment Martin.
English is such a Heinz57 polyglot language, having absorbed words from just about every other language family, as well as being a profligate creator of new words, that spelling these borrowed words correctly becomes all the more important.
I know that other countries, France for instance, has an organization devoted to keeping the French language pure, and expurging all those nuisance American colloquialisms. Still, if we were to try to restore English, how far back in history would we go? The English colonial expansion of the 16th century? The Norman Conquest? The Saxon invasion? The Danelaw? The Roman colonialization? Definitely food for thought, and some fun speculations.
Thanks also for the tip about Marina and her Hot for Words blog and YouTube posts
. I have to say that as an old geezer, (hence my railings against language abuse in the business environment) my taste runs to the older series of wordsmithing recordings on National Public Radio by the late John Ciardi, Poet Laureate of the US.
And, I have to commend Marina for knowing how to market to her target niche, with the right tools, and relevant technology.
Steve
Ha! I meant to say, “Thanks for your comment Martin.”
There’s my pet daemon, Hubris, coming back to bite me in the butt again.
Steve
Steve,
Could you listen to John Ciardi’s recordings online? I think that the English language is a very rich and colorful (colour in British English). I learned from my international project management (coordinator) studies that about every third word is coming from Latin. I am an American in spirit and an “Anglophile” (a French word from Latin!;), so I am a big supporter of using English. It will always be my second language due to the fact that I was born in Sweden. Luckily, we learned English from third grade. I have read German for some years, and I have no problem to read a text in German and understand it. The problem is to speak it and get it right, grammatically speaking. I had Spanish for one year, so I have only remembered a few phrases.
I will try to learn Interlingua sometime in the future. http://www.answers.com/topic/interlingua
Yes, Marina of Hot For Words knows how to use technology and how create a personal brand with a twist.
By the way: Are you a fan of P.G. Wodehouse’s writings?
As an end note, I recommend you to check out Babylon translation program.
Cheerio!
Great point Steve! The webmasters really must do their best to addapt to the changes and new conditions. The misspelling in SEO will always take place as people are comming from different countries and tell thank you, that they are looking for our pruducts in English!
Making Money on the Web
I teach writing in the corporate world and I’m torn between two positions. First, we are enabling people to spell any old way (such as your examples show). By accepting poor spelling we are lowering our standards. (Shame! Shame!) Second, however, language is in perpetual flux and perhaps it’s time that we get rid of all the silly spelling in English and simplify the spelling so all of us can live happily ever after. Personally, I think the second is happening because English has stripped away so much to make itself simple.
Perhaps a winnowing and simplifying of English spelling would be a good thing. But, who would be the arbiter and guardian of the new ‘standards’? And would anyone (besides editors and educators) pay them any more attention and respect than they do now? I doubt it.
You have only to look at the diaries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the western American Continent in the early 19th Century or the letters of the Jamestown Colony in the early 17th Century to see how native English speakers spelled everything every which way. We haven’t really improved much, have we? hahahaha
Even the venerable Bard, is reputed to have spelled his name variously as Shakespeare, Shaksper, Shagspere, etc.
Steve,
Have you read Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation by David Price? (Click on “Comment by Martin Lindeskog” if you want to read my post, Jamestown.)
I look forward to visit the birthplace of America!