How does Google handle alternate spellings these days?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Dave Elliott: How does Google handle alternate spellings these days? Basically, i have noticed on WMT that some people are searching for advisor rather than adviser. I always optimise for adviser, is Google clever enough to work out that they are one in the same?
  
  I know the answer should be yes, but is it? ;
  
  The serps i am getting for colour/color & advisor/adviser are different enough to suggest that it does make quite a bit of difference. So how would you deal with this? Stick to one and get over it?  ;Do a couple of instances of each? Do a page about differences between adviser/advisor and the confusion it can cause and stuff in every key phrase that involves advisor/adviser into it ( :D ) even if there are 30ish that this applies to?
  
  Or something else.....
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  Andy Bassett: Interesting question I like to see the answer to this as well.
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  SEMrush: +Dave Elliott this is a cool question indeed! :) will be digging in to the SERPs more for this, but seems Google is not 100% matching those up and gives different results.
  
  just checked in the tool. the search volume for color is three times higher than for colour and there is a very distinct division by markets :) UK users search for color whereas Canadians chose colour. Both versions work for US with 'colour' having higher CPC.
  so in case of different spelling just chose the spelling that is mostly used in the target region)
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  Dave Elliott: uk users search for color? really? This surprises me lots. We spell it colour theoretically! ;
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  Harry Dance: I have the same problem with adviser and advisor and to be honest, throughout the site we have both phrases optimised. However we have the luxury of having a large site, so the chance of a visitor seeing both optimised pages in a close space of time is low.
  
  Saying that I feel a bit dirty optimizing both phrases, just because it doesn't create a continuous reflection of the websites language. +SEMrush ;has it right, potentially target the phrase which has the highest search volume in the area and hope Google sees the other phrase as a synonym and ranks you partially for that and a few long tails.  ;
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  Dave Elliott: Its not a small site, so could probably get away with it, BUT, they use the term adviser in their brand name so so it will look very strange to suddenly start spelling it wrongly in the copy, makes it a harder decision.
  
  i have toyed with the idea of creating a page about the etymology of advisor/adviser and explaining why they are different and which regions use each of them etc, but this just seems a little..... i dunno......wrong somehow.
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  SEMrush: +Dave Elliott this would be a good question to send to Matt Cutts to answer in one of his short videos :)
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  Dave Elliott: how do you submit to ask matt? (presuming the current on going SEO questions hangout hasn't given me the ideal answer) never mind found it
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 02:09:54 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/how_does_google_handle_alternate_spellings_these_days +Dave Elliott
  
  The cuetimes listed on this page are functional while the live broadcast continues and also once Youtube has finished processing the public broadcast. Processing time varies between 6-24 hours. During this period the clip is viewable in full but the cuetimes cannot be relied on.
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  Dave Elliott: Advisory is a very good suggestion. ;