Time-lapse confusion

Timelapse was a video game, this we know. When you type ‘timelapse’ into google it asks if you meant ‘time lapse’ but shows results with ‘timelapse’ and (mainly) ‘time-lapse’ in the meta title tag. This suggests that ‘timelapse’ is not really a word in common usage. ‘Time lapse’ is ambiguous because the definition of usage is loose.

If you enter ‘time-lapse’ it shows results with all three variations of spelling.

If you enter ‘time lapse’ it does also but the results vary slightly.

So which keyword should you optimise for?

Well it depends what you mean – semantics!

Some argue that ‘time-lapse’ refers to time-lapse photography (common usage) – the hyphenation is a way of packaging and individuating the meaning so it becomes shorthand for this filming and photography technique.

‘Time lapse’ is also used to refer to this but more literally means ‘a lapse of time’.

Anyway, for Lobster Pictures we tried to disambiguate time-lapse. Don’t know if it will work yet but we’ll see…

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