Off the top of my head I would say yes because it just makes sense to me. But I’m not a SEO expert because it constantly changes - you can’t necessarily apply yesterday’s rules anymore nowadays.
Does this mean we should misspell a tag if it's a word misspelled a lot?
This is a tough one.
The tips/best practices found here don't mention anything in this vein but the Creator License Agreement says this:
● You may not intentionally misspell your Content or Products (unless such misspelling is part of the Content).
But then if you read through this thread from June there are many examples discussed of these tips & rules being ignored and not enforced. My feeling here is the same as it was for that situation - I think they just want us to tag wisely and appropriately and not intentionally engage in practices that would get your products in results where they don't belong.
When the duffle bags came out, there was the whole 'should it be duffle or duffel?' question. But neither of those are actually misspellings and neither are going to be interpreted as something else, so I used both spellings in my tags as you don't know which a shopper might use.
chili vs chilli vs chile is a weird one though. Depending on where in the world you are and whether you are thinking of a pepper plant or the meat-based dish, any might be correct. The only thing definite is that if you are referring to the country, it's CHILE. So IMO, if your product is related to the pepper plant or the meat dish, you should probably use all three of those spellings as none of them are actually incorrect and you can't know which one a searcher would use. I would hope that Google (or any other SE at this point in time) is smart enough to know, based on other keywords in the search, whether you want results related to the plant/dish or results related to the country.
Here's an article that sums up chili vs chilli vs chile.
On the other side of this are typos. Not common misspelling or alternate spelling, just plain ol' typos. For those, I feel like no, should not be using those in our tags. One example that comes to mind is "peace on earth". Common phrase on xmas designs. A long time ago there was a discussion over grove vs orchard and that's when I noticed numerous instances of Designers making the typo of "peach on earth" in both title and tags for "peace on earth" designs. I chalk that kind of mistake up to auto-correct and voice recognition. I don't think it's intentional. But knowing this is a common accident, should we purposely use "peach" in our tags in addition to "peace" since the searcher may be unwittingly making that mistake? For that kind of thing I think, absolutely not.
I think it has to be on a case-by-case basis.
1) Is it a common typo or common "misspelling"?
2) Is it actually a misspelling, or just a regional or archaic version each of which would still be perfectly proper to use?
3) Are you using an alternate/misspelling to intentionally game search results or evade IP rules?
I think as long as we are being honest and not trying to cheat the system, it's OK to be aware of and use other acceptable alternate spellings.
As for peppers -
Googling "hot peppers" and looking at random results, both chile and chili are common. For instance,
The Chile Pepper Institute of New Mexico State University and MarthaStewart.com use chile.
The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and scovillescale.org use chili.
Wikipedia, Perdue.edu and Britannica note both spellings. And this interesting note (from WebMD of all places) that says
Chile is Spanish for pepper. In Mexico, a chile can be any kind of pepper, even mild or sweet. But almost anywhere else, chile or chili means hot.
I work in produce and constantly get questions about peppers. My favorite [/sarcasm] is people who say they need a "chili pepper". Regardless of how they might spell it, that tells me nothing. So I end up having to dig into what are they making and how hot do you want ... in order to suggest one.
For me personally, I'm used to both spellings but if I had to write it out, on say my own label for something, I would naturally go with chili not chile. And two L's, def reserved for the meat dish.
