How to spell Hanukkah 2010
- Hanukkah: 2,590,000 hits.
- Chanukah: 612,000 hits.
- Hannukah: 214,000 hits.
- Hanuka: 68,200 hits.
- Hanukah: 56,000 hits.
- Chanuka: 50,400 hits.
- Chanukkah: 37,800 hits.
- Hanukka: 23,600 hits.
- Chanukka: 20,500 hits.
- Channukah: 15,800 hits.
- Janukah: 10,200 hits.
- Hannukkah: 9,830 hits.
- Hannuka: 6,890 hits.
- Channuka: 2,460 hits.
- Channukkah: 1,090 hits.
- Hannukka: 1,080 hits.
- Xanuka: 503 hits.
- Chanuqa: 448 hits.
- Channukka: 379 hits.
- Janukkah: 59 hits.
While totals are lower due to Hanukkah’s very early start this year (December 1st), Google’s numbers seem especially screwy this year. I just don’t believe that results for Hanukkah fell by 10 million hits year-over-year.
Here’s my original Sixteen Ways to Spell Hanukkah post from 2005.
Perhaps Google Instant is skewing the results?
People only need to type “hanu” before being able to click a Hanukkah-related result.
Google instant made it really difficult to collect the numbers this year. Instead of showing the total results, they added a little “Happy Hanukkah” status message — notably adjusting to the various spellings. I ended up using the deprecated Web Search API but results were not especially consistent. I couldn’t figure out how to get the new custom search API to access the complete index.
Maybe I should have just switched to Bing?