We’ve probably all experienced it at one time or another: you enter a search term in Google and, despite typing errors, Google suggests exactly the search results we actually wanted to search for. Why is that? Is Google maybe all-knowing after all?
Why Google can provide us with the correct search results despite typing or spelling errors also depends on the type of input error. As a rule, Google distinguishes between two types of errors. The first type of error is related to users who are not aware of the correct spelling of their search. These errors are also called conceptual errors, and they occur in language use mostly when the correct pronunciation of a word is known, but the spelling is not. The second type of error is the typical careless mistake, such as a letter being forgotten, a slip on the keyboard, or the letters accidentally being typed in the wrong order.
And at this point in time, search engines like Google wouldn’t be search engines if they weren’t constantly evolving and prepared for mistakes like these. In the past, search engines worked with a keyboard layout. Letter combinations around the selected keys were put together to see if this could make any sense. In the meantime, self-learning algorithms are used, which produce results for strange entries within a few milliseconds. The context is also taken into account by search engines. However, this is more likely to happen when several words are entered into the search field.
