Google "Did you mean" now returns 2 corrected results

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Google "Did you mean" now returns 2 corrected results

suzukik

6:41 pm on Jan 28, 2009 (gmt 0)

When you misspell your search term, Google suggests right one by "Did you mean?"
Now it returns two results for corrected keywords above the original results.
For example when you search "bleu widget", two results of "blue widget" appears first and the those of "bleu widget" appear.
Another example is "aple" for "apple".

I know this feature of correction was observed last December (as a test?) but it is now widely seen.
(also in Japan. ;-))

phranque

10:18 pm on Jan 28, 2009 (gmt 0)

similarly, today i was doing a series of searches and on one there was the "did you mean" link followed by the "no results" message and the following one has a "no results" message followed by some sort of "here are the results for what you must have meant".
i had never seen that before.
if i can find the exact terms again i'll try to describe it better.

tedster

10:23 pm on Jan 28, 2009 (gmt 0)

I noticed something strange yesterday that may related. I correctly spelled "keyword" and the #2 result had the typo "keywor" highlghted in bold - missing the final letter. In fact, when you truncate that word, you do not have an English word at all.

phranque

1:38 am on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

i found an example of what i saw earlier:

No results found for "big red widget".
Results for big red widget (without quotes):
.
.
.

TechnoDiary

7:51 am on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

Yep, I am seeing this from yesterday. Now it's going to be very tough to get traffic from misspelled words. Good for users.

steveb

8:22 am on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

I've been getting that 2 corrected results nonsense for some time now. It's very frustrating when searching for names.

Same with the idiotic "typo" correction.

To get accurate results you have to type "word" or +word to force goggle to actually search for what you type.

suzukik

8:20 pm on Jan 29, 2009 (gmt 0)

Google Japan officially announced the enhancement on its blog.
[googlejapan.blogspot.com...]

P.S.
You may read the post by using Google translate though it is translated somewhat strangely.

steveb

4:05 am on Jan 30, 2009 (gmt 0)

It's so hopelessly terrible for users you have to wonder if Google has to do it to cover the algo's incorporation of mispellings.

I just searched for a specific person, where there are about 100 results total, but the inital Google page shows over a million. Unsophisticated users would never find what they are looking for.