You may have noticed that when a query is misspelled in Google search, Google displays “Did you mean” suggestions. These suggestions are mostly what we meant to search but by mistake we have typed the search term with wrong spelling. These suggestions are adaptive, and get smarter based on the words Googlebot sees as it explores the web.
Google Inc.(NASDAQ:GOOG) have taken a new step in increasing the reach of its adaptive technology. The same feature is now implemented in Google Docs which updates the traditional dictionary with spell checking that grows and adapts with the web. This means that instead of relying on a fixed dictionary, it uses Google’s powerful “Did you mean” database, learns new words and offers spelling suggestions.
According to Google, this has many advantages over traditional spell checkers:
- Suggestions are contextual. The spell checker can now identify what you meant to type.
- Contextual suggestions are presented even if you’ve misspelled a dictionary word. For e.g. if you write “Let’s meat tomorrow morning for coffee” you’ll see a suggestion to change “meat” to “meet”.
- The spell suggestions are constantly evolving. New popular words will be automatically included in this spell checker.
The official post says:
We’re really excited to give you a spelling system that continuously gets better. We hope it will make writing more efficient and enjoyable for you.
Google has currently made available this feature to English documents and presentations. This feature would be integrated with more languages soon.
