Google's spelling correction system Options

[Respree]

I just stumbled upon this a couple of minutes ago and thought to share it.

It doesn't appear this page was ever intended for public viewing, but it mentions about Google's "spelling correction system." I wasn't aware of any in place, but maybe it's a project in the works.

http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html

<guessing: If you misspell a search query that had no results, it will correct it for you and pass the corrected spelling query>

[kensplace]

Hi respree, I think they are on about the bit that says "Did you mean XYZ" when you type in XZY

Looking at googles benefits, they seem on the written down side a good place to work, I wonder if its as good as they say, I once worked for a biggy and they wrote similar things about how lovely it is to work there, but each time I read those pages, I feel ill at the lies they tell!

Saying that tho, google has a good product, which the other firm didnt

[Respree]

Hi Ken:

At first, that is what I thought.

But then read, "Each of these variations was entered by at least two different unique users within a three month period, and was corrected to [ britney spears ] by our spelling correction system"

as in past tense (as opposed to, "did you mean...", as with the current way they suggest alternative spellings).

Not sure what to make of it. Maybe its nothing.

[minstrel]

Interesting. I agree that reading through those pages it doesn't look like simply the "did you mean Negritude Ultramarine" insertion... it looks like they might be doing some sound-alike word matching or other forms of spell-checking. AtomZ's site search has offered this capability for some time so there's no reason why Google couldn't be implementing it. In Google's case, it's a capability that can "learn", according to them...

Of course, as with my quoted example (Negritude vs. Nigritude), the danger is that using something this may potentially decrease relevance in the search results - what if you really didn't want Britney Spears but rather Brittany Speers? :shock:

I believe AtomZ will give you both anything it finds with your spelling as well as close "sound-alike" matches.

Addendum
I just tried several searches with misspelled words or names and Google did it's "did you mean?" thing each time but apparently didn't return any URLs for the corrected spelling - of course, in each case, perhaps not surprisingly, Google found pages that cointained the misspelled word(s) so perhaps Respree's hypothesis that this would only happen with zero results is correct?

Addendum 2
Try a search for "Britony Spears" (without the quotation marks)... interesting results, especially #2 (for Google.com anyway).

[jeremy]

I find it amazing that so many people search for her!