Scholars don't use google for research. Students and laypeople do.

This is one search engine scholars use:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...c+context+cues (553 hits)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...+context+clues (26 hits)

Since you're good at math, you'll quickly see that's about a 21.3:1 ratio of academics who publish using 'cues'.


What happens is that students, and a lot of other laypeople, hear 'context cues' and think they heard 'context clues'. Then they go to google to learn about it cause they're not sophisticated enough to use a proper scientific search engine.

And then later, some guy who knows nothing about the topic but heard 'context clues' being used by someone else and wants to win an argument with some guy who does know, uses google search numbers to prove he's not alone in his ignorance.