Why did google screw around with string searches and AND?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I'd like to refer to post #17. How is that search string not a phrase? And how is it optimizing to make my search less accurate?

I'd like to refer you to ****ing try it out.
See my screenshot. It IS a phrase and it IS treated like one.

And it optimizes your search because words like "in" and "the" and "and" are completely useless outside of a phrase in a web query. Every site seems to have those kind of words, they don't narrow down your search at all.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Nikolai
"Paris spring" could mean anything, but "Paris in the spring", if used with "s, would be me looking for an exact phrase, perhaps something I've read somewhere. According to Asher however, google would like to decide for me that I am not looking for that phrase.

WHAT THE **** IS YOUR PROBLEM

For the THIRD TIME, "Paris in the spring" is queried AS a phrase because it IS in quotes.

JUST ****ING TRY IT.

****.

[BlackCat]

This hurts : Asher is right

[MikeH]

He is and his screenshot is exactly what I get. Someone get me some of what Nikolai is smoking.

[Sprayber]

This thread has some potential

[Asher]

The potential of a thread is inversely proportional to the potential of its clueless posters.

[Mercator]

For those of you lacking Google-fu, look here:

http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100502

And read all the Search Guides in that menu on the left there too.

Try this too:

http://sudarmuthu.com/blog/2006/05/07/google-search-syntax-dissected.html

Originally posted by Nikolai
Also, I think, but is not sure, that this once upon a time would give me pages with only one of the terms. I might be wrong though:

http://www.google.no/search?hl=no&q=...S%C3%B8k&meta=

No, that was never the case. Using OR means it searches for pages with any of those words in it, instead of all of those words.

That is, your example will find all pages with "Paris" in them, "Berlin", or both "Paris" and "Berlin"... Without the OR, Google will only find pages with both "Paris" and "Berlin".


On the other hand, though, I have in fact come across searches myself where searching for a phrase in quotes also returned results that didn't have that phrase in there. I can't find any right now, though. Adding a + before the quote. E.g. if "Paris in the spring" actually didn't work, +"Paris in the spring" would.

Those cases were probably because other pages linking to one of the search results did contain that phrase in the link to that page, though there may have been other reasons.