Michelle Liu and James B. Nelson

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin residents have trouble spelling their state's name, Google said Wednesday, a flip-flop by the search giant that wound up coming full circle.

A map published Tuesday by Google Trends showed spelling searches by state between Jan. 1 and April 30, and indicated that for Wisconsin the most-searched "how to spell" word was "Wisconsin."

That led to many stories — including one on JSOnline — and widespread social media ridicule about residents not being able to spell the name of their own state — a word that's easily sounded out.

However, the map conflicted with a list provided to USA Today on Friday that showed the most-searched word in Wisconsin was actually "tomorrow." That put Wisconsin in the same boat as Colorado and Arizona, states that also had trouble with "tomorrow."

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel updated its story to reflect this new information.

Later Wednesday, a Google spokeswoman said indeed the offending word was "Wisconsin," and not "tomorrow." She said it was a simple mistake and that two sets of data were mixed up in the earlier list.

She said that it's not the first time the survey found that residents have had trouble spelling their state's name. Last year, the top misspelled word in Massachusetts was "Massachusetts," she said.

Google said that these are the most-searched words in Wisconsin in the past week: "Wisconsin," "sincerely," "believe," " instead," "committee," "cousin," "Fahrenheit," "actually," "consensus" and "thoroughbred."

In the four-month window, the most-searched word for Texans and Missourians was “maintenance.” Those in Washington, Alabama, Michigan and Maine alike wonder about “pneumonia,” while people in South Carolina stumble over “Chihuahua.”

The response to the information about Wisconsinites having trouble with their state names was pretty brutal. Here are some samples:

“You gotta love the Cheeseheads,” WildCatReport.com managing editor Louie Vaccher said.

“Wait... people in Wisconsin don't know how to spell... WISCONSIN? Try Massachusetts!” tweeted user @melissalac.

“I'm a Wisconsinite. This is embarrassing, LOL!” Twitter user @chocolateclipse said.