Instead of irritating people with aggressive banners, we found a way of working with the Google spelling function: we signed up for Google AdWords. This involves linking search terms with advertisements, which then appear with the search results. We registered our ads with the most common spelling mistakes, thus imitating the Google spelling function. Now, if the user types in “bicycel” the following message appears: Did you mean: bicycle www.duden.de/rechtschreibung Did you spell bicycle incorrectly? Duden – the official guide to German spelling.

The results were overwhelming. On average, we achieved 30,000 appearances per month. And almost free of charge since costs are only generated when the user clicks on the link! The click-through rate (ctr) was a stunningly 1.51% - five times higher than the average 0.3% rate for a banner.