Google American Spellings

If you are using the UK version of Google (www.google.co.uk) to search for keywords with English spellings like “personalised mugs” or “search engine optimisation,” Google decides to show the American spelling results. Obviously Google is American and they will no doubt show bias to their preference of using the “z” rather than “s” in English spelling, but this can sometimes be a frustrating experience.

A screenshot of this is shown below:

This is quite an annoying trait for Google to have, and for UK searchers (there are a lot of us), it can be insulting to suggest we have spelt something wrong when actually, we haven’t.

Really, for user friendly searches I would expect Google to show the results we have searched for and then suggest the alternative spelling. Most UK companies with people searching in the UK would want to target phrases spelt correctly, e.g. personalise and optimise etc. When someone does know what they are looking for, Google is almost saying that this is wrong.

Interestingly, even when you select the option “pages from the UK” Google still suggests the American spellings (with the z rather than s). This isn’t a major issue but it is something that on the Google Webmaster forums, they (Google) haven’t really responded to yet. We will just have to wait and see if this changes or remains an issue for future searchers.

Rob Bromilow
Natural SEO Programmer