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AudhumbLa's SpeLLing Bee: Web Site Study Guide

Browsers and search engines are very literal. They will look for url's based on exactly what you type in. So be careful to make sure you type in the right information. Below are a few examples of some cases where spelling makes a big difference.

Abby was planning his vacation trip to Japan, and meant to log on to the web site for United Airlines, www.United.com. However, he made a small typo (you should try typing with hooves!) and went to www.Untied.com. What did he find there? A site dedicated to collecting complaints about United Airlines. Someone was clever enough to realize people often reverse letters while typing and grabbed this site as a way of getting their gripes about United seen by potential travelers!

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Localized words

Your customers are people, people who have their own way of speaking.  The words they use are frequently defined by a regional dialect, their age bracket, their industry, and their native tongue.

Audhumbla remembers a U.S.-based cell phone software company with heavy sales targets for the UK.  They planed several expensive marketing campaigns as well as a website revamp.  From sales calls, they knew that potential customers were interested in:

�radio frequency optimization software�.

They made sure their website used this as a keyword phrase.  They followed all the steps the experts advised but they didn�t get the traffic they expected to their site.  Do you see the problem with their approach?

Answer: Americans and British have that picky spelling issue with �z� and �s�.  The US-based company forgot that their target customers would search on �optimisation� with an �s�.  This forgotten little dialect detail undid all their planning.  And while search engines are continually improving their thesaurus features (e.g., a search for car should also return pages with auto and automobile), they lack the ability to compensate for idiosyncrasies in spelling and dialect.

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