Let me repeat the BIG question one more time…

Is “Gogle” The Most Misspelled Word On Internet ?

I certainly know the answer to this question but let’s not just go straight to the answer of “Gogle being the most misspelled word on Internet or not ?‘” and know why did i come up with a post like this (I reckon, this whole article on this strange word “Gogle” will be very interesting and informative for the readers).

First and foremost, what’s the deal with the word “Gogle“(in other words, what’s so special about the word “Gogle”). Actually, “Gogle” does not mean anything as such, in any existing language but is actually a “typo” or a misspelled version of the very popular “Google”(needs no introduction, i guess).

It’s quite understood for any popular word (such as Google) to have multiple typos (Google has Gogle, Gugle, Goggle and few more combinations) but how did that come into my notice and what’s so special about it?

It all started when a guy kicked off a chat with me and started asking about popular social networks all around the globe. He was a Friendster guy by the way, but during the chat, i realized that the guy was repeatedly misspelling ‘Friendster’ as ‘Frienster’ (and when i pointed this out then he started defending it).

It was a little odd but the conversation and some post-chat analysis made me realise that popular entities are largely misspelled(or mistyped) on search engines. Thanks to efficient search engines that still bring the right result on top of the search results.

Ok…but you guys might be thinking how did Gogle (Google’s typo) come into picture. Keep reading…

I am certainly not one of those voracious readers of novels but rather a guy who breathes internet and does all the reading and writing on web itself. And since i encountered that frienster guy, i got hooked to a small research paper on Misspell Psychology that i found somewhere on web (a study on the most common misspellings by humans and why will they keep doing it forever !).

Yesterday only, i finished that research paper on Misspell Psychology and thought of putting across my observations and learning from the research study but i required a popular ‘misspelled word’ to work out my things well. I could very well choose any of the 100 most misspelled words in English but then, as i mentioned earlier, i breathe internet and hence decided to look further on web and dig out the “Most Misspelled Word on Internet” (and NOT English). It didn’t take much time for me to realize that the word i was looking for is none other than “Gogle”.

Recalling the BIG question again,

Is “Gogle” The Most Misspelled Word On Internet ?

And the answer is YES, “Gogle” is certainly the most misspelled word on internet(atleast, right now).

So, now when you know what’s so special about the word “Gogle” then you might even be interested in knowing what’s the possible psychology and reasons due to which millions of people search for “Gogle” on web. Let’s start with the analysis then…

“Gogle” is a typo/misspelled version of “Google”

Global searches for the word “Google” : 338,000,000 (estimated)

Global searches for the word “Gogle” (Google’s typo) : 4,090,000 (estimated)

Below are all possible types of people who contribute in searching for meaningless word “Gogle” on search engines:

Type A: Too fast to handle

These folks very well know that “Gogle” is nothing but a typo of the word “Google”. It’s just that they type so fast on the keyboard that they often skip pressing(or press very lightly ) the ‘o‘ alphabet two times simultaneously(Google) while searching for “Google” and simply press “Enter”. This results in typo word “Gogle“.

Type B: Newbies on Web

These kids are very much new to web and have just heard about the Magic box “Google” that exists on internet. As they are too young, they are obvious to be more frequent in committing typo errors, both English words and internet buzzwords such as “Google” (or ‘Gogle’). Out of sheer curiosity and a sense of experimenting with the web, they misspell “Google” as “Gogle” an they are hardly concerned what the search results are. This way, ‘Type B’ newbies contribute to the millions of “Gogle” searches.

Type C: Weak Spellers

These folks are quite exposed to web and already know what Google is. But they are inherently a “Weak speller”. They generally misspell english words too often, have a tendency of judging mostly on the basis of sound while pronouncing the keyword. Apart from ‘Gogle‘, they hugely contribute to ‘Gugle’ (which sounds exactly how ‘Google’ does).

Type D: Intentional Typosters

These folks have random reasons to intentionally query a ‘typo’ such as ‘Gogle’ as a search term. The reasons are not so obvious, mostly undefined or unidentified. They are the minority of Typosters(or Goglers). To make this particular type understand better, you can take my own example. I searched for ‘Gogle’ deliberately, just to see what results are showing up on search engines before writing this post.

Type E: Perfect guys, No typo habits

These guys thankfully don’t have any Typo habits. They are just perfect in remembering spellings of popular web entities and general english as well

How Search engines tackle typo/misspelled search volume ?

There are most chances that you’re already addicted to Google. Hence, you might have observed “Did you mean …………. ?” appearing at the top of search results when you mistype some search term.(try searching commonly misspelled word vaccum). Google also displays the most relevant result as the top result, just for the sake of user convenience. Other search engines have similar ways.

How do popular web entities deal with Domain resemblance conflicts(such as Gogle.com) ?

Just think of a possibility when Gogle.com is a separate website, not providing users what they are actually looking for(search engine) but something else(which can be ANYTHING!). Popular entities generally avoid such a Domain resemblance conflict by buying out and re-directing all such resembling domains to the main website. In this case, you can check yourself that Gogle.com redirects to Google.com.

Also note that main domain’s extension variants are also redirected to the main site. In Google’s case, Google.net, Google.org, Google.biz and all other extensions are simply re-directing to Google.com

As an alternative, the conflicting domains are simply parked and turned non-crawlable(by manually creating a robot.txt file). In Google’s case, most of the ‘resembling domain extension variants’ are not even crawlable by the search engines. I have listed various extension variants of the domain “Gogle” with their current status.

Gogle.org (Current status: Parked domain, blocked using “robots.txt“)

Gogle.net (Current status: Blocked using “robots.txt“)

Gogle.biz (Current status: Redirects to some german erroneous website)

Gogle.info (Current status: Working. It seems the owner is a typical ‘Domain reseller’)

Gogle.mobi (Current status: Just nothing. Shows up a plain blank page)

Gogle.co.uk (Current status: Blocked using Robot.txt)

Gogle.us (Current status: Parked domain.Tracable till July 2007 )

Gogle.tv (Current status: Domain for Sale. Owner is looking to pass it on to somebody else)

Gogle.ca (Current status: Redirects to some unassociated site, asking for donations)

Gogle.co.in (Current Status: Domain for Sale. Redirects to Goole.co.in, another domain for Sale)

Gogle.me (Current status: Parked under Godaddy.com)

If you think that you may be one of those Typosters who misspell more often than not( just like ‘Google’ as ‘Gogle’) then i recommend you to test yourself by going through this free spell check test and confirm your notions.

If you’re really one of those typosters then keep checking here as i will update this post with relevant sources and information to help you get rid of this “typo” problem.

By the way, thanks for bearing this super long post today, but it was a good idea to share with you, the analysis and data that i collected.