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Beware of 'Swan Flu' and Other Common Misspellings

by Leila Brillson on June 16, 2009 at 11:00 AM

Yahoo! buzz editor Vera Chan spoke to USAToday.com about the most misspelled search engine terms, putting 'Brack Obama,' 'Swan Flu,' and 'Paperview boxing' (our personal favorite) at the top of the list. Trends and breaking news, she said, obviously contribute to the misspellings, but the worst typos occur when searchers look for other sites, including 'Gogle' and 'utube.'

Google senior engineer Mark Paskin says that there are two different types of misspellings in this context: typos and conceptual errors. Typos are mistakes, but conceptual errors occur when users misunderstand or simply don't know the word they're trying to find. Paskin has compiled his own top list of erroneously spelled search terms, including 'nauseous,' 'definitely,' and 'stilettos.' Like Chan, he also sees a lot of 'u tube' searching, which, while it does refer to a certain type of plumbing device, is usually a misguided attempt to reach the video site. [From: USA Today]

Tags: funny, search, search engines, SearchEngines, top, web, yahoo

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