Do you know the 2-letter abbreviation for Mississippi? Many people don't

Google trends tracks information many people never think about. For instance, in this story, Google alerted us to the most searched type of abbreviation.

Our guess would have been the numerous text abbreviations we've had to master in the last 20 years or so. We were wrong.

Believe it or not, the most-searched type of abbreviation of all time is for state abbreviations, according to Google, which we have to admit can sometimes be confusing, especially for states that start with the same letters.

Take, for instance, Mississippi. It starts with "Mi." But so does Missouri, Minnesota and Michigan. On top of that, four more states begin with the letter "M": Maine, Massachusetts, Montana and Maryland.

For those of you who don't know, Michigan gets the MI abbreviation. Missouri is MO and Minnesota is MN. Mississippi's two-letter abbreviation is MS. Maine is ME, Massachusetts is MA, Montana is MT and Maryland is MD. Try getting all of those right on a test.

While that may not matter to some people, if you're sending a letter or package in the mail, having the right abbreviation can make all the difference when it comes to where it goes or how fast it gets there — or even if it gets there.

The U.S. Office of Research Services confirms the states that start with "M" and "A" are the most confusing to abbreviate correctly.

So, what state abbreviation is the most searched? According to Google, the Top 3 are Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi, in that order. Arkansas (AR) is another state that has competition with Arizona (AZ), Alabama (AL) and Alaska (AK) all starting with "A."

How many state abbreviations can you guess correctly? Contact Lici Beveridge at [email protected]. Follow her on X @licibev or Facebook at facebook.com/licibeveridge.

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Mississippi a top abbreviation search on Google