Keyword spelling?

[JanislaJewels]

I've just checked Google Adwords for keywords relating to jewellery (or jewelry), and found that by far the greatest number of searches were, believe it or not, for "jewelery" and "jewellry"! As far as I know neither of these are real words. This applied to both global and local (uk) searches. Don't people get taught to spell any more?
I think I'll try adding these abominations to my tags and see what happens!

[Former_Member]

Seems like an easy typo to make, and some people just don't proofread very well. When eBay was still fairly new, people were turning a profit by searching for products and intentionally misspelling their search terms, which allowed them to find listings that the average user wouldn't. They'd then be able to purchase the item at a reduced cost, and resell it.

[JanislaJewels]

If it's a typo, it's a very common one - over 16,000,000 and 9,000,000 searches respectively for the 2 mis-spellings - more than for any correct spellings, English or American!
In fact, unless I've read the AdWords report wrongly, Google doesn't report any use of the correct words in a search except as part of a phrase, eg "gold jewellery" or even "jewelry uk". I'll definitely have to tweak my listings!

[Former_Member]

I think there was once a UK seller in here who asked the team how they personally spelled jewelry. I believe where she was from it was mostly spelled "jewelery"
I vaguely remember it, but I thought it was sort of interesting. So maybe something like that is what's leading to such high numbers of the misspelled word?

[Former_Member]

ah, international sellers were the ones who responded, not asked. JuJuBeader asked the question about how you spell jewelry :)

http://www.etsy.com/teams/5002/etsy-success/discuss/8553355/

[PearlesPainting]

I often misspell it. I just type away and then notice...I spelled it incorrectly.

[MythOfTheWild]

That's a bit of a big issue. You can't put three tags as "jewelry" "jewellry" and "jewellery", so people who are perhaps simply a little dyslexic or just can't spell will miss out on it. You just have to hope that your stuff will pop up in a little more precise search. To be honest, if someone searches jewellery, no matter how it's spelled, your stuff probably won't come up until page 30 anyway. Jewellery is a huge business and it's the big well known companies and retailers who will pop up first. If someone were to search "colourful jewellery" or "polymer jewellery", Etsy is much much more likely to be near the top of a search.

You just have to accept that a lot of people can't spell it. I've been on big websites and their jewellery category was misspelled as well. I've had to dictionary it up numerous times just to make sure I have it right myself! :P

[Former_Member]

People used to score great deals at Ebay because the sellers would misspell their listings making it hard for buyers to find their items. The savvy ones would do a search for misspelled items. Unfortunately, Ebay has since corrected this problem. I'm not sure if Etsy works like that. But, I think every one here knows how to spell since i have yet to find a typo in a title.

[JanislaJewels]

I wish that were true, nickeldesign! I've just done an etsy search for "jewelery" and got over 7000 hits, and over 4000 for "jewellry"! At first I thought it was picking up the correctly spelled items as well, until I found that those who had their titles correct also had the misspelled versions in their tabs, intentionally or otherwise. I believe etsy searches stick to the given search term, however it's spelt. I try to remember to put both uk and american spellings in my tabs (and this has been suggested in several threads if I remember rightly), but have never tried any deliberate misspellings.
@Peachesand Pebbles, some people do put all 3 or 4 versions in their tabs. It would be interesting to find out if they get more views than those who don't. I'm obviously not the only one who's discovered this. I just thought I'd mention it as another couple of possible search terms. I'm going to try it for a few items that I have trouble finding enough suitable tabs for, and see if anything changes. I'll report it if anything major happens!

[JanislaJewels]

By the way, does anyone know how to interpret the "competition" column in Google Adwords?