{"id":2483,"date":"2011-07-22T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T10:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/msr_er\/2011\/07\/22\/in-search-of-britneyor-brittanyor-brittannie\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:33:45","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:33:45","slug":"in-search-of-britneyor-brittanyor-brittannie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/in-search-of-britneyor-brittanyor-brittannie\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search of Britney\u2026or Brittany\u2026or Brittannie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever mistype your query in a search engine? Or just flat out misspell it? Of course you have—we all do, especially when our search involves “spelling demons” like minuscule, millennium, or embarrassment. Or personal names: believe it or not, there are more than 500 ways that Britney Spears has been misspelled on the web. Misspellings and typos make it difficult for search engines to give users the best results.<\/span><\/p>\n

Better spelling algorithms can get users to the information they seek, without their having to carry around a dictionary or scroll through several pages of results. Quality spelling algorithms become even more relevant when the searcher is using a smartphone, as it is difficult to browse through page after page of results on those tinier screens.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this in mind, Microsoft Research (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> and Microsoft Bing (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> launched the Speller Challenge (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, encouraging participants worldwide to compete in creating a spelling algorithm that generates the most plausible alternatives for web search queries. Participants were able to access real-world data at web scale by using the Microsoft Research Web N-gram Services (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Moreover, participants were able to improve their algorithm and see how it compared to other spelling correction systems by using an evaluation service that we made available to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 300 participants registered for the Speller Challenge, representing every continent (well almost; no one actually registered from Antarctica) and including researchers from academia, research laboratories, and industry. Winners were automatically selected, based on how well their system performed with respect to figuring out the best spelling alternatives (for example, “Britney Spears” for “briteny spears”). On Tuesday, July 19, we hosted a workshop at Bing headquarters, where Harry Shum, corporate vice president of Bing, presented the winners their prizes. Congratulations to everyone who took part in the program: <\/span><\/p>\n