Google UK Showing US Based Spelling Suggestions

Jan 14, 2010 - 7:44 am 2 by
Filed Under Google

If you search at Google UK for keywords such as [search engine optimisation] or [personalised napkins] or the like, you will get US based spelling suggestions from Google.

Here are some screen captures:

Google UK Spelling Suggestions

Google UK Spelling Suggestions

The old S vs Z in US vs UK English.

As you can imagine, this is not just annoying for UK searchers but also can be a bit insulting. So far, Google has not commented in any of the threads I have seen report this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums & Google Webmaster Help.

Update: Google seemed to quietly fix this in the past 24 hours.

Update 2: Here is a statement from Google over 24 hours later:

We recently introduced a change to the spell correction feature on the google.co.uk domain. This change introduced a bug where we were suggesting American English spelling refinements. We have temporarily rolled back the change while we fix the problem.

 

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