Comments on: Search masterclass

By: bingobangoboy

bingobangoboy — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:12:00 +0000

This sub-heading ticked me off:
“Most of what you know about Boolean is wrong.”
(reason: Google uses “OR” but ignores “AND” and uses “-word” for “NOT word”)
My knowledge of Boolean is just fine, thank you.

By: Vaughn Stegeman

Vaughn Stegeman — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:29:00 +0000

Oh wow, “intext:” .. THANK YOU!!!! m/

By: zarray

zarray — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:25:00 +0000

At any point in your quest did you have to stand in a circle of hooded men?

By: Mari Lwyd

Mari Lwyd — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:05:00 +0000

The illustration exercise really helps clarify what kind of searchtools they’re offering: if you want to know history, general parts of a vehicle, or the latin name for an animal then you’re S-O-L.

Now if you want to intrude on someone’s personal life WELCOME TO THE NEW IMPROVED WE-DO-EVIL GOOGLEVERSE

IT”S GODDAMN LOCALIZED EVEN THO THAT”S USELESS FOR 90% OF YOUR SEARCHES

By: Elliottw256

Elliottw256 — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:59:00 +0000

I believe that when Google indexes a page, all punctuation is discarded, or converted to spaces with extra spaces discarded. That would make find a solution, well…impossible.

By: Jason Rihel

Jason Rihel — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:40:00 +0000

I was trying to play along, but the photo resolution when I downloaded it from Boing Boing wasn’t high enough to quite read the logo of that building. Which would have helped…. A lot.

By: Spencer Cross

Spencer Cross — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:02:00 +0000

Here’s the Google search tip I’ve been fruitlessly trying to dig up: how do I get it to search for a multi-word phrase ignoring results that include punctuation within the phrase? If you search for “word1 word2″, for example, you’ll get results for “…word1. Word2…” and ”…word1, word2…” and “…word1-word2…”, etc. It’s maddening, especially considering that a result like “…word1. Word2…” is clearly irrelevant to what you’re searching for.

By: dolo54

dolo54 — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:23:00 +0000

I too miss the google of yore and have been increasingly using duckduckgo. The intext feature is a good tip, but just typing + was much better. I find it odd that they don’t seem to have reused the + icon for any google+ type feature. Not sure why they dropped it. I think their decision to promote google+ at any and all costs will prove to be a very bad decision. I mean going up against facebook in their prime is like when yahoo when up against google in their prime. You don’t enter a ring with Mike Tyson and expect to win even if you have been working out every day for a year.

By: David Llopis

David Llopis — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Past year

No results found for ”best internet search engine” OR “best search engine” “knowledge worker”.

By: David Llopis

David Llopis — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:35:00 +0000

Dear Google: I’m willing to pay money for world-class search tools. So if you can no longer find any other way to prioritize the needs of professional information seekers, consider charging me.

By: Mari Lwyd

Mari Lwyd — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:23:00 +0000

I use verbatim mode. I was not aware of intext: and it completely blows.

Google blows.

They have tweaked into fuckerdness all of the things they were good at to achieve almost worthless ends.

If I told a GPS device the location I wanted and it decided that I *really* wanted to go somewhere else and would direct me there unless I used a secret word to say please, I would throw it out the window.

I am ready to throw Google out the window.

By: David Llopis

David Llopis — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:13:00 +0000

Through some effort, I think I found the most current documentation:
https://developers.google.com/search-appliance/documentation/60/xml_reference#request_query_terms

Irony: finding the secrets of search requires knowledge of the secrets of search.

By: John Thomas

John Thomas — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 20:13:00 +0000

Well, to be fair, the question was poorly phrased and I suspect missing a “from”:

“What’s the phone number of the office [FROM] where this picture was snapped?”

By: liquidstar

liquidstar — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:56:00 +0000

answer: I don’t give a darn.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:55:00 +0000

I’d like to see them get rid of links that are straight copies of wikipedia.

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:41:00 +0000

damn, my google foo was strong reading comprehension was weak

By: dlelash

dlelash — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Also Andrew Sullivan’s weekly View From Your Window contest at http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/ .

By: cleek

cleek — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:15:00 +0000

what I find most annoying about Google: not giving the results I asked for, which happens time and again in my obscure research.

tera-dittoes.

i miss the “+”. and i despise the “here are some results from a search that kinda looks like what you typed!”

By: John Thomas

John Thomas — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:50:00 +0000

He doesn’t want the details of the building in the photo, but rather the office he took the photo FROM.

By: RadioSilence

RadioSilence — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:46:00 +0000

If you’re interested in more of these search games, Daniel Russell posts a weekly problem over at Lifehacker.
http://lifehacker.com/search-research/

By: Culturedropout

Culturedropout — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:40:00 +0000

I do online computer support. Just try searching quickly for something you’ve found that you want to verify is not a virus! In the Google search results, everybody and their pet dog claims to know what it is, have something that removes it, wants to sell you one, or expresses concern that you might be embarrassed by it. Even if the term never appears anywhere on their web site. *sigh*

By: John Thomas

John Thomas — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:06:00 +0000

I don’t understand your problem. He searched for Google Offices Warsaw, chose the appropriate link and got the phone number.

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:57:00 +0000

i found the building easy enough (looked for PZU found the name of it, checked where its home office was, then looked for westin in warsaw, poland and seen the tower on the map, the name was there but no telephone. the website didnt have a number the wikipedia article didnt have a number i couldnt find the number)

By: corydodt

corydodt — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:55:00 +0000

I’m kind of amazed that with all of his CSI-like analysis of the photo to find out the phone number, he never even mentions GPS exif data.

Assuming the shot was taken with a smartphone, it could tell you everything including exact altitude within a couple meters. In the process of creating his article, though, the exif data is lost (I checked, no GPS). Still, that would be the first thing I look for.

By: corydodt

corydodt — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:50:00 +0000

I stand corrected. Jer_00 is correct, “” doesn’t do what I thought it did. It prevents Google from altering the spelling of the term, but it will still search for neighbors and may prioritize your other terms.

By: Ashen Victor

Ashen Victor — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:47:00 +0000

Yea, nice, ok, wonderful…

But HOW did searched for the phone number of that office?!

I have read the whole article expecting some explanation, but all I have are just tools.

By: atteSmythe

atteSmythe — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:38:00 +0000

I’m sure that for the vast, vast majority of searches, modifying your terms does make the results more helpful. That’s actually the source of my despair! There seems to me little hope that my old-timey search expectations will last much longer…

I wish I could remember a good example. It’s only recently that I noticed Google matching entirely different words than what I wrote. I could tell, because this new word was bolded in the summary text, like the actual search terms were. But when I’m looking for a term, I’m looking for exactly that term, not something related to it.

If intext: also prevents that word substitution, I may just have to make a script to automatically put it in front of every word in my Google searches!

Edit: And they’ve long attempted to fix spelling. They’ll have the “Searched for X, Click here to search for your original terms” link – but not for this related additional term. That would be much better.

By: Chentzilla

Chentzilla — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:30:00 +0000

There’s one thing I’m very eager to find out, but it either isn’t on the Internet, or I can’t make a right query:
Sometime in the nineties I’ve seen a music video obviously inspired by Lemmings video game: though the green-haired creatures were nowhere to be seen, the singer was mimicking the movements of different lemming types: digging with a pickaxe, falling with an umbrella, standing with spread arms and turning her head as a blocker, etc. I also remember the “level” she was digging through looked like two male faces seen from side and conjoined where the rest of their heads should be. Unfortunately, I don’t remember neither the singer’s name, nor the song’s. Any help?

By: John Tedesco

John Tedesco — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Thanks for the post, Cory, glad you found the tips useful. Intext: was news to me, too. The image search and map search pretty much blew my mind. Thanks for reading.

By: David Llopis

David Llopis — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Where is Google’s official, comprehensive operator documentation, and why is the top hit for [ google search operators ] “neither affiliated with nor endorsed by Google”?