I'm sure we have all seen it, or have had it happen to us. You are doing a search on Google and you get a results page that says "Did you mean ####" at the top of the page. I firmly believe that this is a helpful tool to many people who are either horrible spellers or had a momentary "brain-fart." But what do you do when this affects your own search engine traffic?

One of my clients has a company name that is spelled with one T as opposed to what the conventional dictionary spells the word (with two T's). What she feels is happening, and we cannot fully confirm or deny, is that people are searching for her company name and are inadvertently clicking the "Did you mean" link and not finding their company. We tested her theory and if you click that link, she is correct in that her company does not appear. The upside is that just under the "Did you mean" link on the original results page is the listing for her company, so I don't think it is affecting her as much as originally thought.

That being said, this could have a potentially negative effect on your search engine optimization strategies. How do you combat this? Is there a way to suggest to Google and any other search engines that use this technique to not display this spelling as wrong? I realize it is just a suggestion made that can be ignored, but how many people think they have actually spelt something wrong?

This is where I need some assistance. Are there any studies out there that have taken this "issue" into account? Is there any way to inform the search engines of this problem, and will they do anything about it?

Aside from those, I also am curious as to where or how Google and others are deciding what is spelt wrong or mistyped? Are they referencing dictionary.com, Wikipedia, or do they have their own proprietary dictionary or database of commonly misspelled terms?