24 replies to this topic

[JohneeMac]

Whats the correct term? People seem to search for both...

[mcanerin]

Officially, it's supposed to be "web site" and "e-mail" but common vernacular has made "website" and "email" acceptable and common.

For SEO purposes, either choose the one that gets the most traffic, best fits your niche marketing, or whatever.

Personally, I prefer "website" since if you use "web site" you run into all the sites that talk about just the "web" in general. You also get the folks who mention job sites, spider webs, etc.

Ian

[respree]

The highest ranking guide on Google's Directory of style guides says that "it is now clear that the standard form is website", and recommends this spelling.

Most webmasters seem to agree.

Although there are some who do not.

Oddly enough, there are some who think its should be spelled 'wesbite'.

[Jill]

Either is acceptable. There's no real standard in use.

[OldWelshGuy]

Whichever gives you the most, and if you do it right, then you get both.

[JohneeMac]

Well for my term website design Scotland or web site design Scotland it seems to get very similar results in the keyword checkers so i think ill try and target both.

Thanks for the quick replies.

[Jbrookins]

I vote for "InterWeb Location" as the new standard! Website is so cliche and uninteresting these days.

[kology]

So if it's a website do we have a webpage?

I always liked the original web site along with e-mail. I also never liked the new Coke (any remember that). The problem was especially in the US, that publishers/editors tried to shorten everything so we lost the space in web site and the hyphen in e-mail.

I vote to stick with web site until we're ready to deal with something called a webpage.

And the "e" in "e-mail" is for "electronic" and proper English dictates that a truncation should be shown with an EM dash (ok we can get away with a Hyphen). '

I believe the Oxford family of dictionaries (Canadian, British, Australian), still show the official spellings, while Websters has gone the way of website and email.

Remember it was good old Webster who changed the Zed to a Zee because he thought it sounded better. And look what that has done to the world.

Of interesting note, the spell check on this forum says "website" is incorrect

[Jbrookins]

*snip*

Pedant!

[BrianR]

'InterWeb Location' indeed! Trust a marketing bloke to come up with some new fangled jargon! <g>

BrianR
New Fangled Marketing Bloke

[jspope]

Hi!

Don't take this too seriously, but...

phpSpell (you know!... the spell checker for your posts to this forum) recognizes "web site" as correct but not "website".

Come to think of it, phpSpell isn't spelled correctly either.

Regards,

Stephen

[plantboy]

I vote "website" because it makes it a word unto itself, with its own status. Compound words have a tendency to glue themselves together over time. Newspapers were once news papers. Today was once To-day. Perhaps the march of time is moving faster today since "web site" and "e-mail" were only born about a decade ago and already they are changing. But hey, that's the Internet for you - speeding up the engines of change.

[Jbrookins]

'InterWeb Location' indeed! Trust a marketing bloke to come up with some new fangled jargon! <g>

I wasn't feeling all that creative at the time, or I'd have spent a bit of time with a thesaurus. "Position" sounds much more technically savvy than "Location"

InterWeb Position, or if it's a hard sell, Optimized InterWeb Position!

[jspope]

Hi plantboy!

You're right! Words, spellings and even meanings change with time. Sometimes words are so new that they haven't made the dictionary yet.

For example, it wasn't too long ago that the coined word Google came into existence. See the definition of google at dictionary.com.

I'm used to Google being a noun. However, a teenager recently told me that he was going to "google" a particular subject. Thus, by usage, the noun has now also become the verb.

Regards,

Stephen :-)

[kology]

We can always go with a play on URL (universal resource location)

Univeral web Location or UWL (pronouced You Well or You'll) for short.