Google changing your Search Automatically – Reducing Relevancy

After performing some checks on rankings this morning, it became apparent that Google has changed a search for me without being given a choice in the matter.

When searching for the phrase [Search Engine Optimisation] in Google UK this morning, Google has taken the step of deliberately changing the results being displayed for this phrase to the z spelling [search engine optimization]:

This is another example of poor UK search engine results from Google at a time when the problems that plagued webmasters and SEO‘s alike in the summer in a lot of respects had settled down.

Google does tell you that it is changing this, which is considerably less visible when paid results are displayed at the top of the screen instead of only just on the right hand side as per my example.

So, the result of this, is that people searching on Google.co.uk for [Search Engine Optimisation] – presumably/potentially looking for a UK based Search Engine Optimisation provider, is now being served results for sites that have targeted the spelling with a z. This ultimately results in an increase in the number of USA websites appearing in the results, as this is how the term is spelt in the UK.

Hopefully this is a test – as this reduces the relevance of those results. Whilst you can get the results for Search Engine Optimisation by explicitly telling Google to do this, this should not be done automatically for you, and particularly for a result that ultimately results in failing with the localisation (or as Matt said on Twitter, Localization) of that term – which only ultimately fails a user that is searching for results on that term.

I’m yet to see this rolled out on other terms, but Google should better appreciate what is required in terms of language and spelling choices in various regions than this – this is part of what made Google such a success, in terms of delivering the most relevant results specifically for each market. This move, if rolled out further would only further decrease the relevancy of their results for the UK market, in what has already been a difficult 6 months for relevancy here.

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