“Growing up”, Google learned to understand the abbreviations. Today it knows that ‘SEO’ stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. You can see it in the search engine results pages where Google highlights the keyword you have made a search for in the text description it displays about your site. So if you make a search for ‘SEO’, it will highlight the text ‘Search Engine Optimization’ as well.

What is to be noted here is that this is actually wrong. Why? Because this is a search results page of the Google.ie, so it should have the Irish spelling here. Note that there is also a text there ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ – the way we spell it here in Ireland. The Google.ie didn’t highlight that, meaning it didn’t understand that this means SEO as well.

Someone should teach Google.ie the Irish spelling of the English words…

Until then, watch your META Description Tags. If you want Google to understand you and display and highlight appropriately, you need to spell the full meanings of the abbreviations the American way. Otherwise Google will not recognise them, and will not display / highlight them properly in the search engine results pages.