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"Swan Flu" and Other Commonly Misspelled Search Terms of the Month

By Alex in Blog & Internet on Jun 28, 2009 at 1:20 pm


All of you Neatoramanauts know that we love tpyos here at Neatorama, but even we know how to spell Susan Boyle, MySpace and Swine Flu – those are just three of the most commonly misspelled (or perhaps mistyped) searches in Yahoo!

Vera H-C Chan of Yahoo! Buzz’ The Buzz Log has the list:

Recent Orthographic Abuses of the English Language on Yahoo!, Past 30 Days

* Swan Flu (for Swine Flu)
* Susan Boil (for "Britain’s Got Talent" contender Susan Boyle)
* Brack Obama (for U.S. President Barack Obama)
* Sonia Sotomeyer (for Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor)
* Rachel Ray (for Food Network host Rachael Ray)
* Paperview boxing (for cable programming pay-per-view boxing)
* Amtrack (for train system Amtrak)
* Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart)
* Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett)
* Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart)
* Arlene Specter (for Senator Arlen Specter)
* “Dancing With the Starts” (for ABC reality competition Dancing With the Stars)
* Bea Author” (for the late comedian Bea Arthur)
* Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears)
* Chris Allen (for “American Idol” winner Kris Allen)
* Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm)
* Mysapce (for MySpace)

Link – via USA Today

Previously on Neatorama: Swine Flu: Bacon’s Revenge


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COMMENT
  1. verloren
    Jun 28th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    I'd always assumed that lesbain was the most common incorrect spelling on the internet.

  2. seefish3
    Jun 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    I believe "the" is the most common. But only because you can't misspell "A".

  3. Tempscire
    Jun 28th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    I'm surprised people searching for Bea Arthur missed with "author" rather than "bee."

    I'm also surprised by how...not-insanely-stupid most of those are. I can't really blame people for misspelling someone's name they may have only heard before or a name with an atypical spelling, either because of random changes (eg, Rachael) or unfamiliarity ("Sotomeyer").

  4. Ashley
    Jun 28th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    A lot of those are pretty understandable, but when I see "swan flu" I hear a bunch of rednecks talking about their sick pigs...

  5. Haukka
    Jun 28th, 2009 at 11:59 pm

    I'd imagine most of these searches are made by people outside US, whose primary language is not English.

    We too often write words we've never heard before by the way we hear them.

    Or are these results all from Yahoo US?

  6. Zecc
    Jun 29th, 2009 at 5:42 am

    But... I really need help configuring my worm!

  7. Mercado
    Aug 11th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    Omg If the majority does these searches we are lost, I expect not to be for one of this. That´s a shame

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