Some searchers can’t spell

If you search a given keyword misspelling there are usually very few Google organic results for that term, yet if you look at the sponsored results from Adwords there are sometimes a fair few advertisers.

Are the Sponsored search users on to something?

Probably, yes.

Before I go on I know that some people are going to think “that’s not ethical” or “misspellings degrade your site”. Well in my eyes if when an Adwords user uses the Keyword suggestion tool and that tool suggests a misspelling to bid on then it’s fine for Google to take their money, and it’s fine for me to try to get up in the organic listings aswell.

A little test

Take the term Sattellite Tv for instance. A very common misspelling with only 83,200 results in the larger US data center and 3,660 in the UK data center. This search term also has a fair few “sponsored results” which leads me to think there’s some traffic to be had here. So I check:

• Overture Rating = 370,206 (sometimes doesn’t show misspellings)
• Wordtracker = 11
• Adwords Keyword Tool = half green bar

Then have a quick look at Google US results:

• allintitle: = 123
• allinanchor: = 83,200

It looks like no-one has purposely targetted this phrase for organic listings but have for sponsored listings.

I’ve only altered one page’s title tag for Sattellite TV and put out 3 anchor text links, which should get crawled and followed and I don’t feel it’ll require much more. I would have prefered to do it with a supplemental page, but chose the page with the least search engine traffic that was related.

Is it a good idea?

I don’t know if it’ll work, I’m not an expert, so time will tell. One thing is for sure I’m not going to do it very often as a misspelt title tag, if noticed, looks bad on a site! The point is I’m surpised I don’t see more people targetting misspelling, but I’m probably about to find out why with this little experiment.

I would also like to hear any views on this.