searches without accents give SERPs with accents

I think this is new - since the last update?

[laurellyon]

I've just noticed that google searches for spanish words leaving out accents (which is how most people search) are returning SERPs with the correctly spelt words (ie, with the accents). This wasn't the case up to a month or so ago, it used to be that searching on the 2 versions of a word gave completely different results.

The main effect for me is losing some competitive advantage. As I mentioned, most Spanish speakers search leaving out the accents, but most sites if they optimise, do so for correctly accented words. Now the 2 groups are melded I can kiss that goodbye! :(

[heini]

We have seen that coming for many months now. I guess it's a thing of sophisticated linguistic analysis capabilities.
Interesting example is the ascii oe vs extended, german ö vs extended, scandinavian [not on my keyboard oe]. All merged now.

[John_Caius]

Doesn't work with everything - I'm testing the French e acute accent. Compare [google.com...] with [google.com...] - they're quite different.

You may just be seeing the effect of non-accented anchor text links causing an accented page to come up in the SERPs.

[heini]

I never realy dug into this, as in german it's not an option to optimize for non extended character spelling. Anyhow, what I see here is clearly a merger of the different spellings. Take a search for moeller/möller as an example. That's not anchor text.

It could be worthwile to set up a list of extended characters which get merged with their ascii compliant counterparts.

[Chris_D]

This topic seems to come up regularly - I must be missing something?

Heini - I tried your search in www.google.com (with Search Language set to "Search for pages written in any language".)

moller 205,000 results
möller 367,000 results

If I now reset the search preference to ENGLISH only - I get:

moller 115,000 results
möller 64,200 results

If I then reset the search preference to GERMAN only:

moller 19,100 results
möller 142,000 results

What part am I missing? They are different results?. What settings/ domain are you searching in?

[heini]

Chris, you need to compare moeller vs möller.

[WebWalla]

I think generally this is a good move, but it does bring up some anomalies. For instance, the letters n and ñ are quite different in Spanish, yet Google happily interchanges them, which makes specific searching much more difficult.

[Hagstrom]

Chris, it's not just the number of hits.

When you search for "möller", you'll find that möller, moeller and møller are all highlighted in the SERPs.

[cornwall]

There have been a number of threads on this recently, eg

[webmasterworld.com...]

If you do a WebmasterWorld site search on "google accent" you'll get some more

[Chris_D]

Ok - sorry about the typo - but I still don't get it.

Heini - in www.google.com with search preferences set to "Search for pages written in any language" I still get:

möller 360,000
moeller 327,000

moeller top 5 serps ------- möller top 5 serps
-----------------------------------------------
moellerdot net ------------- informatik uni-augsburg de/~moeller/
moellerdot org ------------- moeller-wedeldot com
moellerusadot net ---------- chalmers se/staff/tomasm
moeller-wedeldot com -------- daniel-moeller.de
rfmoellerdot com ------------ kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg

The only one which appears on both lists is moeller-wedeldot com
Look in the moeller-wedeldot com cache on the möller search:
"These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: möller"
NOW look in the moeller-wedeldot com cache for the moeller search:
"These search terms have been highlighted: moeller"
ie one ranking is there because of the spelling used for inbound link text - the other ranking is there because the word is spelt that way on the page (and probably in some inbound link text).

Hagstrom - when you said "Chris, it's not just the number of hits" did you mean 'RESULTS' in the SERPS?
Also - you said "When you search for "möller", you'll find that möller, moeller and møller are all highlighted in the SERPs" - I'm NOT seeing that - I only see the precise search term highlighted. moeller is highlighted if I search for moeller - but möller is NOT highlighted if I search for moeller.

So I'm still not convinced that anytning has changed. i would be convinced if anyone could please post an example, (and state from which google domain, and which language preference was set) where you can provide an example of identical results - ie where Google is returning identical results?

PS I met Woz and dantheman at the Sydney Search Engine Strategies Conference today - Hi Guys!
PPS I know you aren't supposed to post URLS - thats why I changed them - but I felt it was the only accurate way to explain my point.

[Hagstrom]

> Hagstrom - when you said "Chris, it's not just the number of hits" did you mean 'RESULTS' in the SERPS?

Yes (sorry if I have used a wrong term).

> Also - you said "When you search for "möller", you'll find that möller, moeller and møller are all highlighted in the SERPs" - I'm NOT seeing that - I only see the precise search term highlighted. moeller is highlighted if I search for moeller - but möller is NOT highlighted if I search for moeller.

I use Google.com and "Search for pages written in any language". BTW my results are:

möller 317.000
møller 309.000
moeller 330.000

Number 3 in all three SERPs is maerskdot com. It has moller in the title (which is not highlighted) and twice møller in the snippet (which is highlighted).

I started another thread [webmasterworld.com] about this subject some time ago. Apparently it has some thing to do with where you're located.