Off-topic Google-related rant.

Robert Macy wrote in news:804fdf6d-c0a8-440e-8f50-
:

google just replaced my normal "Advanced Search" window with their new
one. I think they're taking lessons from Microsoft. They broke what
worked, and changed for no discernible reasons.


Bit you too, did it? They've been switching that one in and out on me for
weeks. Months even. I think the original is still avaliable. I haven't
figured out exactly what Proxomitron did to force it yet, but try changing
your browser's user-Agent string to Lynx or OffByOne or some other minimal
browser. Google will serve a much cleaner page for all its search pages then,
image search is far better, no sluggish active code to make image-hunts
tedious and difficult.

Robert Macy wrote in news:804fdf6d-c0a8-440e-8f50-
:

2.Reduced number of listings per screen shot, don't see how to get
more than an incredibly small number of hits on a page! I used to be
able to get 100 entries on a single page, with that left I could then
go down through selecting ones to view separately. Now have to scroll
to new page, go back and forth between pages, etc, etc !!!


That can be fixed in settings. (I like 20 per page).

Robert Macy wrote in news:804fdf6d-c0a8-440e-8f50-
:

3.Entries require more typing than before, used to be able to fill in
a line labeled "exact phrase" with a string of words, and you were
done, now you must fill in the line with a string of words and then
have to add quote marks! absolutely NO reason for that! I used to add
quote marks on phrases to be included and did not mind adding quotes
to phrases, but this is stupiditiy!!!


I don't know what you meant exactly, because the advanced-page whole string
field won;t need quotes, only if you try it in the top field do you need
those, as it's the same as the normal songle field page. The top one will
take all the usual operators and quotes.

I do find that using quotes on single words is almost mandatory now though!
It's terrible, it's like having to shout at them to overcome deafness because
of their gross insensitivy to words that should constitue a rigorous AND-
based logical combination anyway. This is lunacy becayse they should be going
the other way! Letting us chose EXACT strings, with whatever punctuation or
characters we see fit. That way we have an option that dramatically reduces
false matches when we are after something details and specific. I mean,
suppose one of the few things we end up remembering that closely was some
typo on a page, or a quirky use of a space before AND after commas. Could be
anything. Some tiny cue to memory that would let us find the page again at
need, IF they'd let us try to match such things. Trying to search for code,
or examples of correct punctuation, is impossible if we can't do it. For the
purposes of education alone, and speedign things up, I think they, or some
other search engine, ought to let us do it. Or at least explain to us all why
they refuse to. As a simple string compare is just about THE easiest thing to
do with code, I won't accept 'difficulty' as the explanation for refusal.

"Bill in Co" wrote in news:a-Wdndd-
:

1.Their window used to fit in one screen shot, now have to scroll up
and down to complete entries and then search! Two motions for one
action!!!

I agree, I do believe that has changed. :-)



It's actually pretty sad if they feel the need to fit a few small text fields
and list boxes so widely apart that a modern monitor can't hold them all!
That, and the need for quotes on single words to force them to appear with
the frequency we have reason to expect in top results, makes them seem like a
dotty maiden aunt with bad hearing and a bad attitude. it gets to the point
where having to see them every day becomes painful.

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

throwing spam from content mills like Ehow.com
at us

About that... (Ehow does apparently make actual content, none of the ones I
just explored do even that much!)

Example of how Google allows spamming from content mills with no effort to
resist despite claiming otherwise:

Search terms:
allintitle: tooltip win32 api

First twenty results include these domains, every one as bogus as it looks.
They all have the same string, as follows:
"Hello Community,. I have to show a Tooltip for a control via Win32-API
programmatically..."


Domains:
girlit.net
Fake link, diverts to demand your attention to a language teachign method (I
think that's what it is anyway).

www.techques.com
Ad-based page, content taken (ostensibly under license) from
Stackoverflow.com. That happens a lot.

www.nerdground.com
Dead. Another content mill, now apparently shut down, Google don't care, they
STILL address it as if it meant something, even after other people shut it
down.

www.justlogged.com
Another ad-based content mill riding on Stackoverfow's output. They're honest
about this, but it still stinks.

wwv.comanswer.com
Same as above. Yet another content mill.

ho.runcode.us
Ad nauseam, run by the same people as the last, not even trying hard to prove
otherwise!

efreedom.com
Strange one. A content mill, but no ads. I have to wonder what they get out
of this one.

ansaurus.com
And again. Also no ads.


And that was just the ones that copied the thread title, there may be tens or
hundreds more that dragged out bleeding chunks, failed to aknowledge sources,
and even snipped paragaphs mid-word to sneak ad-heavy pages into high Google
rankings. My point is very basic: Google say they are trying to stamp this
out, but clearly they are not, as this (and far worse) now heavily dominates
their output, and that's just the ones that have ACTUAL LINGUISTIC SYNTAX,
and are not fragmented beyond legibility. They really don't care, because
it's easy enough to filter. WE could do it too, if they let us have an exact
substring match to use to elimate all the bogus copies at one stroke. They
don't clean this up, and they will not let us have clean results, because it
is not in their interest to do so. The idea that they have a huge library of
real content to find for us is about 95% illusion! Once people get to grips
with this, it might improve, but not otherwise.

Google has turned into a giant paper-shredder, and they're encouraging worse.
They want all our info, and exchange, we get all their noise. Never mind
dreckburgers, this is **** they want us to eat.

On Mar 8, 12:50*am, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Lostgallifreyan wrote 5:

throwing spam from content mills like Ehow.com
at us

About that... (Ehow does apparently make actual content, none of the ones I
just explored do even that much!)

Example of how Google allows spamming from content mills with no effort to
resist despite claiming otherwise:

Search terms:
allintitle: tooltip win32 api

First twenty results include these domains, every one as bogus as it looks.
They all have the same string, as follows:
"Hello Community,. I have to show a Tooltip for a control via Win32-API
programmatically..."

Domains:
girlit.net
Fake link, diverts to demand your attention to a language teachign method (I
think that's what it is anyway).

www.techques.com
Ad-based page, content taken (ostensibly under license) from
Stackoverflow.com. That happens a lot.

www.nerdground.com
Dead. Another content mill, now apparently shut down, Google don't care, they
STILL address it as if it meant something, even after other people shut it
down.

www.justlogged.com
Another ad-based content mill riding on Stackoverfow's output. They're honest
about this, but it still stinks.

wwv.comanswer.com
Same as above. Yet another content mill.

ho.runcode.us
Ad nauseam, run by the same people as the last, not even trying hard to prove
otherwise!

efreedom.com
Strange one. A content mill, but no ads. I have to wonder what they get out
of this one.

ansaurus.com
And again. Also no ads.

And that was just the ones that copied the thread title, there may be tens or
hundreds more that dragged out bleeding chunks, failed to aknowledge sources,
and even snipped paragaphs mid-word to sneak ad-heavy pages into high Google
rankings. My point is very basic: Google say they are trying to stamp this
out, but clearly they are not, as this (and far worse) now heavily dominates
their output, and that's just the ones that have ACTUAL LINGUISTIC SYNTAX,
and are not fragmented beyond legibility. They really don't care, because
it's easy enough to filter. WE could do it too, if they let us have an exact
substring match to use to elimate all the bogus copies at one stroke. They
don't clean this up, and they will not let us have clean results, because it
is not in their interest to do so. The idea that they have a huge library of
real content to find for us is about 95% illusion! Once people get to grips
with this, it might improve, but not otherwise.

Google has turned into a giant paper-shredder, and they're encouraging worse.
They want all our info, and exchange, we get all their noise. Never mind
dreckburgers, this is **** they want us to eat.

Your earlier phrase about a cranky aunt that's painful to see is
EXACTLY correct. What used to be the fastest easiest experience on the
net has turned into a total grind. Actually dread having to search for
anything now. I'd rather read the bibliographies at the end of papers.

Robert Macy wrote in news:f9f101dc-eb69-4b4c-8cdf-
:

Your earlier phrase about a cranky aunt that's painful to see is
EXACTLY correct. What used to be the fastest easiest experience on the
net has turned into a total grind. Actually dread having to search for
anything now. I'd rather read the bibliographies at the end of papers.



Exactly so! I was thinking that. Wikipedia, for example. The external links
and references are WAY better than Google at this.

If they can do it without getting paid by advertising, why can't Google do it
WITH all that money?

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:33:25 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Robert Macy wrote in news:804fdf6d-c0a8-440e-8f50-
:

2.Reduced number of listings per screen shot, don't see how to get
more than an incredibly small number of hits on a page! I used to be
able to get 100 entries on a single page, with that left I could then
go down through selecting ones to view separately. Now have to scroll
to new page, go back and forth between pages, etc, etc !!!

That can be fixed in settings. (I like 20 per page).

Mine is set for 25 via a Google cookie:
http://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en

I also found the following:
http://support.google.com/websearch/...&answer=136861

Fill in the blanks (*)

"Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of
words."

Elsewhere it states that ...

"Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other
special characters."

Doesn't that mean that the asterisk in -conver* would be treated as
punctuation and therefore ignored (as would the + operator)?

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Franc Zabkar wrote in
:

I also found the following:
http://support.google.com/websearch/...dv_operators&a
nswer=136861

Fill in the blanks (*)

"Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of
words."


Good point. It appeared to work for me at times. eBay allow it and I may have
just confused that usage. But then, it IS a tad strange when it works on
eBay, but a dedicated search engine can't do it! Most people know that a *
wildcard means match anything at and after that point, with bounds limited by
whatever context applies. Google expect us to accept stemming, yet fail to
let us use that wildcard for modifying stemming, in direct defiance of
expectations based on DOS and UNIX practise. Seems to back up my assertion
that they want to deny us precise control, and yield to their mushy logic.

Elsewhere it states that ...

"Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other
special characters."

Doesn't that mean that the asterisk in -conver* would be treated as
punctuation and therefore ignored (as would the + operator)?


Presumably, but that would make it hard for them to explain the difference in
results you got for C and +C.

On Mar 8, 7:17*pm, Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:33:25 -0600, Lostgallifreyan
put finger to keyboard and composed:

Robert Macy wrote in news:804fdf6d-c0a8-440e-8f50-
:

2.Reduced number of listings per screen shot, don't see how to get
more than an incredibly small number of hits on a page! I used to be
able to get 100 entries on a single page, with that left I could then
go down through selecting ones to view separately. Now have to scroll
to new page, go back and forth between pages, etc, etc !!!
That can be fixed in settings. (I like 20 per page).

Mine is set for 25 via a Google cookie:http://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en

I also found the following:http://support.google.com/websearch/...&p=adv_operato...

Fill in the blanks (*)

"Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of
words."

Elsewhere it states that ...

"Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other
special characters."

Doesn't that mean that the asterisk in -conver* would be treated as
punctuation and therefore ignored (as would the + operator)?

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

google's "improvements" included not letting me LOG OUT, nor gain
access to any personal settings. just get NOTHING! when I click, or
pull down an extra menu and click