Hello! I was wondering, do the search engines automatically pick up UK and English spellings as being the same word? If not,, which is best to use for best traffic results, does more of the world use US or English? I'm guessing US.
Thanks!
As most of your "general topic" traffic comes from the US, I always write in "US lingo" (pacifiers not dummies, diapers not nappies) unless I'm aiming at a specific country.
While in America, I'm using American spelling. When in the UK I use British spelling. The browsers so are set up that they tend to bring up the pages from the country you are living in. Weird but true!
It has been my experience that it does matter to Google. There are occasions, on my personal sites, that I have included misspelled words simply because the misspelled words are higher in searches according to various keyword tools. An instance is that if you would go to Google Adsense and use their keyword tool, the last time I checked on Google Chrome, the browser, "chrom" ranked higher than "chrome". Not sure if that is geographically related, but it did catch me by surprise.
If you are using a word with a completely different spelling, then choose the US version, simply because there are more possible searchers.
But everyday words like colour or humour where the US spelling drops the 'u', don't worry about it because search engines' algorithms only look for the letters in a particular order, and ignore what it may see as extra letters. So C-O-L-O-U-R is the same as C-O-L-O-R because the letters in c-o-l-o-r are in the correct order.
Words ending with -ise or -ize are completely different, so in order for them to be picked up by the widest range of viewers, you probably want to pick the Z one.
Sometimes I confuse myself, because I tend to write in what I think is US English, but I get it wrong sometimes because its almost like a second language to me.
I see, thanks, my majour concern was socialise/ze and travellling/traveling as these are two of my major key words. I guess the double l makes no difference and I should go with the z then. I'm in Australia, just to confuse matters. thanks for your help everyone!
Ah...as an Australian you know how to spell words properly!
But yes please do follow my advice on the different spellings because it will make a difference to your potential traffic.
Wrylilt, who made some valid and useful comments on this thread, is also Australian, while Sophia is an English language expert with a unique background in English and South American English, with a smattering of American thrown in!
Welcome to Hubpages:)
I'm not Australian, I'm British, I just live here, for now! Thanks again
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