I wouldn’t be surprised to see a forum thread, picked up by Search Engine Roundtable trying to ask why is it that when you search for “rumours” in Google.com you’re served with results plus the “did you mean … ” link. On the other hand for searches on Google UK a search on “rumors” won’t suggest the British English version of the word.
My machine does not show any suggestions for both words at all (see attached image, using “harbour” as a search term).
Yes it is biased to American English that even as I type in this WordPress form every mention of harbour and rumour ends up with that red underline misspelling indicator.
The question that I’d like to be given more emphasis is to why did these different versions of words ever existed at all? Tires vs Tyres, Aluminum vs Aluminium, Jewelry vs Jewellery, Pajamas vs Pyjamas, Defense vs Defence, Meter vs Metre and the list goes on and on.
Why not use another word yet have the same meaning as Soccer vs Football or Apartment vs Flat?
These nuts are making search engines tackle a problem that should not have existed at all. Google is an American company so I guess that’s where the bias was based.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”