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Searching for "kentai kessen" (a typo of "kantai kessen"), you get results for "kendal kessel" on en.wp
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On en.wiki, I searched for "kentai kessen" (a typo of "kantai kessen", the Japanese battle plan for World War II). I got results for "kendal kessel", which is neither what I asked for nor what I wanted.

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Aklapper renamed this task from Search searches for the wrong thing to Searching for "kentai kessen" (a typo of "kantai kessen"), you get results for "kendal kessel" on en.wp.Aug 10 2015, 10:48 PM
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This is working as intended. We recently added some functionality so that if you get zero results but have a search suggestion, then you're automatically shown results for the suggestion instead.

The message shown is "Showing results for kendal kessel. Search instead for kentai kessen." which doesn't really indicate that properly to the user. We should change that message.

Instead of "Showing results for Y. Search instead for X." we could instead say "No results for X. Showing results for Y."

+CirrusSearch, obviously

Results seven years later are mixed:

Screenshot from 2022-07-23 03-46-04.png (247×1 px, 47 KB)

Screenshot from 2022-07-23 03-46-14.png (765×882 px, 114 KB)

TJones subscribed.

As @Aklapper points out, the completion suggester (drop-down suggestions) gives the correct result, which is the best way to deal with typos.

As a general rule, it doesn't make sense to work on improving specific queries. They are only useful as an instance of a larger issue. In this case, one-letter-off typos in titles are handled pretty well.