Soccer or Football - Which Is It?

Some people use the term 'soccer' while others use 'football' and the users of each are quite adamant about their correctness.

My daughter, who is working in London, tells me that people there get very upset when one talks of 'soccer' rather than 'football'.

However, according to Overture the searches on their database show a marked preference for the term 'soccer' over 'football' by people searching the Net.

During June 2006 over 1 million searches were done on the term 'soccer'. This excludes searches done on phrases such as: - 'world cup soccer' - over 400,000 - 'world cup soccer 2006' - over 67,000 and other similar searches.

At the same time only only 421,000 searches were done for 'football', which includes people looking for information about American football.

Doing a search on the term 'soccer' on Google shows that Google lists approximately 409,000,000 web pages that include the term 'soccer' while it lists approximately 684,000,000 web pages that include the term 'football', but again we must remember that this includes pages about American or gridiron football. On the other hand, soccers controlling body, FIFA, consistently uses the term 'football'; and they should know. However, a large number and organisations in the business of soccer (or football) use the term 'soccer' in their official names.

So whos right' The soccer fans or the football fans?

By: Jens du Plessis

Jens du Plessis is an Internet marketing comsultant and the webmaster for Only Soccer Info and World Soccer Articles. http://www.only-soccer-info.com

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