“Did You Mean…” No, I Didn’t.
Posted: February 10th, 2009
After two weeks of running the “Did you mean” feature by default on Google, SEOs, webmasters, and searchers alike are finding the “enhanced” option to be irrelevant and even cumbersome.
The “Did you mean” feature was initially implemented with the goal of helping searchers find what they’re really looking for, by suggesting alternate search queries. These queries are generated based on the number of search results, spelling, and search volume. While this option can be quite useful for those who are less technically adept (or poor spellers), turning this feature on by default was a bad idea.
The screenshot below (click to enlarge) demonstrates what a SERP looks like with “Did you mean” set by default.
In general, webmasters and SEOs are finding that their rankings are slipping, making it more difficult for visitors to find their websites. Also, searchers are finding that the “Did you mean” suggestions are often not what they’re looking for at all.
It would be nice to have “Did you mean” turned off by default, as it once was before. Besides, it’s about time that people learned how to spell, and I’m not yet convinced that the “Did you mean” feature is the most effective approach for accomplishing this anyway. 
hi!
Agree on this one. This feature is a bit annoying. This is one of the reason why I stop using Yahoo…
Actually, I love that feature. Especially when I want to quickly look on something, I don’t even need to bother to spell the sentence correctly
I quite like it, for spelling mistakes at least. Saves you typing the search query in again.
Wonder what it means for those marketers who target misspelled keywords as part of their strategy?
I like it too, but thats mainly because my fingers go too fast for the keyboard and i get typos occasionally. its also good when you know the name of something (A store, company, etc) but dont really know how to spell it..
I dont think its that obtrusive to remove it, or make it off by defualt..
This feature is not different from any other feature we use or don’t use. You can see from the other comments the “Did you mean” has is likes and dislikes. It annoys me to some extent but I have used it a time or two when my fingers were transposing what my mind was relaying to them. Something to think about. Thanks!
Why oh why is there not a satisfactory button next to it saying:
“NO”
So when it comes up with a stupid suggestion I can click NO and be done with it.
DID YOU MEAN UVSC?
“NO” I DIDN’T GO AWAY.
Then google can count all the No’s and remove the suggestion from that particular search. Google take note please… it will work.
This is one of the nervewrecking new features of google. What once was great about google (you found what you looked for) has now become like the older search engines who gave you hundreds of irrelevant hits due to some internal rating… I find myself now needing several searches with quotation marks (which sometimes, but not regularly, force exact interpretation). The results stay shitty in comparison, still. This feature could be useful, if it could be switched on on demand (by clicking on it, like it looks it would work), but like it is now, it sucks big time… lets me yearn for a search engine that takes me serious, like back when, and Google came.
Ninety-percent of the employees at Google vote hard liberal. Liberals know what you need not what you want. There’s no option to turn this annoying ‘did you mean’ garbage OFF. Now you know the rest of the story.
I find this the single most annoying feature on the internet, no exaggeration, purely because I use google so often. Bloody annoying, get rid of it google.
urrrggghhhh this feature is so frustrating! it alone makes me want to throw my laptop out of the window at times!
Occaisionally the did you mean is useful for misspelled words. It is EXTREMELY annoying when you have NOT misspelled a word and Google thinks it knows best.
Better algorithm needed.