Regional variation in spelling english keywords

eg Color and Colour

[xy123]

Some words have multiple, correct, spellings, eg

Color (US spelling)
Colour (UK spelling)

A UK company selling, say, colour imaging software, loses out because google doesnt treat color the same as colour.

In my view a search for "colour imaging software" should return identical results to "color imaging software", but it doesnt.

What are you expected to do if you're a UK company?
use the 'incorrect' spelling for your locality, or just lose out in google search ranking?

I hope google plan to do something about this. A large number of english speaking people do not use american spelling.

[jackofalltrades]

>I hope google plan to do something about this. A large number of english speaking people do not use american spelling.

A large number of people DO use American spelling. :)

This has been debated many times before...IMHO it's fine the way it is.

It gives a slight geopgraphical split when targetting keywords, which is a good marketing advantage.

If color and colour were considered to be the same, then consider the size of the market that would have to be consolidated. It would mean many sites who were already competing in a tough market are now in an even tougher market.

Variations in spelling and grammar allow the opportunity for us to target smaller niche markets, which, more often than not are more profitable.

My 2c

JOAT :)

[Liane]

I agree with JOAT. I am in a very competitive industry, but have opted to only market in my tiny corner of the world. I have targeted keyword phrases which are area (niche) specific. It works very nicely for me and the "big boys" in my industry have (so far) not been able to do much about it as they market to the whole world.

Use the spelling differences to your advantage! ;)

On the other hand, there is nothing stopping you from creating a new page specifically targetting the words "color imaging software". Just don't try to do both on the same page or your readers will think you are a moron!

Use your index page to promote for your local area and then create a new page with a title like "Color Imaging Software Prices". Then optimize the page for that spelling.

[lgn]

Americans have been famous for shortening words for hundred of years. I use to get a lot of heck in my school days for using American spelling, instead of the the proper Kings English.

The rule for grammer used to be, use the spelling which is local for your target audience.

This was fine back in the letter writing days, but now with the Internet, this is complicated.

We are a Canadian web site, and use the Kings English. Our primary market is the USA. I never had an email from the USA complaining on the spelling of a word that has a variation. I have had email when I actually made a real spelling mistake on our website.

I should not be one complaining about spelling, I slept most of my public school english classes, and without a spell and grammer checker; well you seen my emails :)

[xy123]

Thats a nice side effect of this deficiency in google if you *want* to target your specific locality. But its not fine if you're using the web to sell a product worldwide.

One can of course have separate pages with alternate spelling, but thats of little use in a page ranked world.

[xy123]

In reply to Ign, the problem is not that people complain about spelling variations. The problem is simply that in trying to compete in the search engines to get good ranking, the language variations give a problem. When there are alternate spellings, both variations are valid.

Thinking further on the argument put forward by others in this thread - namely that you can use this to exploit area specific searching - that breaks down because in many cases the alternate spellings are valid in lots of countries far removed from each other.

The UK, along with Australia and most other countries in the English-speaking world, uses Standard English. The USA uses its local variant - American English.