BellyDance or Belly Dance - Page 2

Recnadocir · 09-01-2006, 06:39 PM

Great thread- I've often wondered about this myself. I just Google searched both terms, and the winner is...belly dance! By a whopping margin, 16,300,000 entries for belly dance, but only 2,500,000 for bellydance.

I think the Google result is significant, in that it says that by about a 7.5 to 1 margin, people searching for our dance form are entering it as belly dance, which means that is how they perceive the correct spelling.

I also think that in web site design, you want to use terms which more closely match the most common internet search terms. This has to do with metatags, first of all, which are invisible to the website visitor but highly visible to search engines, and in fact are the first thing that many search engines "see" when they "crawl" the internet. Bottom line- better to use the term "belly dance" in your website, in both metatags and in the headers and text, than to use the term "bellydance."

Moon · 09-01-2006, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by recnadocir

Great thread- I've often wondered about this myself. I just Google searched both terms, and the winner is...belly dance! By a whopping margin, 16,300,000 entries for belly dance, but only 2,500,000 for bellydance.

I think the Google result is significant, in that it says that by about a 7.5 to 1 margin, people searching for our dance form are entering it as belly dance, which means that is how they perceive the correct spelling.

Rico, did you search on belly dance or on "belly dance"? If you leave the quotation marks out, google also finds websites which contain the words belly and dance seperated from each other, which means not all these sites are about bellydance (or belly dance, whatever you like

)

samira shuruk · 09-01-2006, 07:22 PM

People are referring to google and/or ebay and/or "popular" spelling for a word. On another thread I remember someone saying "well, I've seen it both ways online, so both ways are OK". (I've seen lots of things on line that are decidedly NOT OK)...
anyway...

Coming from an academic background I'd have to say these are not sources to base research on for "correct" spelling, although great for finding "popular" or "common" spelling. You can't cite them in an academic paper unless you were pointing out the number of people who write a word without looking it up first.

The English language changes over time and dictionaries reflect that. Maybe in time it will change.

Dipali · 09-02-2006, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Recnadocir

I just Google searched both terms, and the winner is...belly dance! By a whopping margin, 16,300,000 entries for belly dance, but only 2,500,000 for bellydance.
I think the Google result is significant, in that it says that by about a 7.5 to 1 margin, people searching for our dance form are entering it as belly dance, which means that is how they perceive the correct spelling.
I also think that in web site design, better to use the term "belly dance" , in both metatags and in the headers and text, than to use the term "bellydance."

Thanks Rico... Those words were very helpful, I still personally agree with many members who think Oriental Dance is the perfect word to define the dance.But in general terms i do use the words Belly Dance, I did a little reasearch(without the scientific fact/and all the paper work) , I asked 5 people who are not involved with Belly Dance, what is Oriental Dance ? and not one of them knew what is oriental dance , One person answered is it a Japanese tea ceremony dance. I did not go further asking what is Raqs Sarqi. I think in popularity contest Belly dance is the term to define our dance.

Recnadocir · 09-02-2006, 08:59 AM

I don't want to give away all the tricks I've learned, but please trust me when I say you're far better off to use "belly dance" on your website pages than any other term, if your goal is to attract new business.

I taught myself all this stuff, but I must be doing something right because in just a couple of months Bel Cobra Dance and Cobra Jazz Dance, the two websites I manage, went from Internet-invisibility to page one or two, searching under some very common dance terms, resulting in anywhere from 10 to 130 million entries. That's 1 to 13 million pages, of course, and we are page one or two. Once we got there, we bounced up and down a bit, but now we have been imbedded.

And I never use parentheses when typing in search terms

09-01-2006, 06:39 PM	#11 (permalink)
Recnadocir Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: La La Land Posts: 466	Great thread- I've often wondered about this myself. I just Google searched both terms, and the winner is...belly dance! By a whopping margin, 16,300,000 entries for belly dance, but only 2,500,000 for bellydance. I think the Google result is significant, in that it says that by about a 7.5 to 1 margin, people searching for our dance form are entering it as belly dance, which means that is how they perceive the correct spelling. I also think that in web site design, you want to use terms which more closely match the most common internet search terms. This has to do with metatags, first of all, which are invisible to the website visitor but highly visible to search engines, and in fact are the first thing that many search engines "see" when they "crawl" the internet. Bottom line- better to use the term "belly dance" in your website, in both metatags and in the headers and text, than to use the term "bellydance." __________________ http://a537.ac-images.myspacecdn.com...0267e2f1c0.jpg *Nos es in Hollywood , quod vos es non!*

09-02-2006, 08:59 AM	#15 (permalink)
Recnadocir Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: La La Land Posts: 466	I don't want to give away all the tricks I've learned, but please trust me when I say you're far better off to use "belly dance" on your website pages than any other term, if your goal is to attract new business. I taught myself all this stuff, but I must be doing something right because in just a couple of months Bel Cobra Dance and Cobra Jazz Dance, the two websites I manage, went from Internet-invisibility to page one or two, searching under some very common dance terms, resulting in anywhere from 10 to 130 million entries. That's 1 to 13 million pages, of course, and we are page one or two. Once we got there, we bounced up and down a bit, but now we have been imbedded. And I never use parentheses when typing in search terms __________________ http://a537.ac-images.myspacecdn.com...0267e2f1c0.jpg *Nos es in Hollywood , quod vos es non!*

09-01-2006, 07:22 PM	#13 (permalink)
samira shuruk Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 47	People are referring to google and/or ebay and/or "popular" spelling for a word. On another thread I remember someone saying "well, I've seen it both ways online, so both ways are OK". (I've seen lots of things on line that are decidedly NOT OK)... anyway... Coming from an academic background I'd have to say these are not sources to base research on for "correct" spelling, although great for finding "popular" or "common" spelling. You can't cite them in an academic paper unless you were pointing out the number of people who write a word without looking it up first. The English language changes over time and dictionaries reflect that. Maybe in time it will change.