Off-topic Google-related rant.

Excerpt from an email I just sent...

c "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 1,780 results (0.06 seconds)

c AND assign "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 497,000,000 results (0.29 seconds)

c assign "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 501,000,000 results (0.07 seconds)

I already mentioned that the AND operator was implicit, and as the results
show, the difference is small. Relatively so, anyway!

An AND operator is supposed to LIMIT the field. Did those result counts look
ANYTHING like limiting to you?!



(The guy I sent it to had told me a couple of weeks back that the words in
Google were implicit OR combinations, but any look at
http://www.google.com/advanced_search will show it ain't so. You have to
EXplicitly do OR between words if you want that. But clearly he CAN be
forgiven for his error of judgement given what Google ACTUALLY do when we
EXPLICITLY demand a logical AND, or use the impl;icit one, to limit the
results.

Is this deliberate, or just plain indolent broken lunacy?! If anyone can
explain this Google madness, please do.

Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Excerpt from an email I just sent...

c "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 1,780 results (0.06 seconds)

c AND assign "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 497,000,000 results (0.29 seconds)

c assign "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 501,000,000 results (0.07 seconds)

I already mentioned that the AND operator was implicit, and as the results
show, the difference is small. Relatively so, anyway!

An AND operator is supposed to LIMIT the field. Did those result counts
look
ANYTHING like limiting to you?!



(The guy I sent it to had told me a couple of weeks back that the words in
Google were implicit OR combinations, but any look at
http://www.google.com/advanced_search will show it ain't so. You have to
EXplicitly do OR between words if you want that. But clearly he CAN be
forgiven for his error of judgement given what Google ACTUALLY do when we
EXPLICITLY demand a logical AND, or use the impl;icit one, to limit the
results.

Is this deliberate, or just plain indolent broken lunacy?! If anyone can
explain this Google madness, please do.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I looked at the Advanced Google
search page and ALLof these options are available in different text boxes,
plus an "exact phrase" box, or "none of these words", to boot.

The only thing weird to me is that in the box titled "Any Of These Words",
you are supposed to explicitly type in an OR between all the words you
want - but that shouldn't be necessary, by definition.

What happens if you use the non-advanced (basic) Google search box and type
in a bunch of terms? I believe it defaults to an AND condition (ALL terms
must appear) - as expected. (And NOT an OR condition, which would be
wrong).

In message , Bill in Co
writes:
[]
What happens if you use the non-advanced (basic) Google search box and type
in a bunch of terms? I believe it defaults to an AND condition (ALL terms
must appear) - as expected. (And NOT an OR condition, which would be
wrong).


I think it does an OR, but weights the results such that ones with all
of your words are listed first, then most, and so on. And given the
number of hits usually returned (unless you're googlewhacking), that can
usually make it _look_ as if it's using AND.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The people here are more educated and intelligent. Even stupid people in
Britain are smarter than Americans." Madonna, in RT 30 June-6July 2001 (page
32)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

In message , Bill in Co
writes:
[]
What happens if you use the non-advanced (basic) Google search box and type
in a bunch of terms? I believe it defaults to an AND condition (ALL terms
must appear) - as expected. (And NOT an OR condition, which would be
wrong).


I think it does an OR, but weights the results such that ones with all
of your words are listed first, then most, and so on. And given the
number of hits usually returned (unless you're googlewhacking), that can
usually make it _look_ as if it's using AND.

Doesn't really matter, they cook the books with so many secret algorithms,
and fail to grant us so much as an exact substring search (making it TOTALLY
useless to search for coding stuff like "\\\\.\\IOS" or "assert(io.open(" for
specific and useful occurences of real working code).

It's so screwed up now that 'logic' just ceases to apply at all!

Technically, it ought to, the FIRST thing everyone knows, and sees, is that
the main idea (and as is explicitly stated for the top field in advanced
search), is ALL OF THE WORDS. Now in what insane dictionary does this NOT
mean AND? If I search for the words Yorkshire Terrier, I expect to get
Yorkshire Terrier plus several terriers, presumably in or related to
Yorkshire in some sort of context even if they aren't Yorkshire terriers.
This is so basic that it SHOULD NOT FAIL.

If we assume that Yorkshire gets X results, and terrier gets Y results, then
specifying both words in an ALL THE WORDS search will only get the same value
for X and Y if every page on (Google's cache of) the internet with Yorkshire
also contains the word terrier! In practise, the combined result must be
smaller than the lowest value, be it X or Y, given that Yorhire is about a
tad more than terriers. And it will NEVER get more than the highest value
of the two, let alone TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES MORE, which is the kind of
ludicrous ratio I was seeing.



Tonight I discovered a search engine with the silliest name in the world,
DuckDuckGo. But it seems to work, and ap[parently it's winnign people over,
and keeping them. I only heard of it tonight, but it's been around well over
a year. Its hit rate for things related to C (as opposed to C++, C drive,
C++, C#, C shore, and C yourbleedingmama) was amazing. Surprisingly high SNR,
and apparently some genuinely innovative and useful methods that its users
can't get enough of. Google WAS like that, maybe 15 years ago, but not now.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

I think it does an OR, but weights the results such that ones with all
of your words are listed first, then most, and so on. And given the
number of hits usually returned (unless you're googlewhacking), that can
usually make it _look_ as if it's using AND.


One of my results was from an EXPLICIT AND. Which it ignored, of course.
Actually, it got slightly more than the half billion, instead of slightly
less.

I read tonight of one person (one amongst many) saying they'd gone back to
Google 'because it was fast'. So is the average down-town dreckburger, but
I'd rather not eat it. It's not as if I'm the first to want better, either,
when I went looking, I saw several who thought they'd found it, and were
still there a year later!

"Bill in Co" wrote in
:

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I looked at the Advanced Google
search page and ALLof these options are available in different text
boxes, plus an "exact phrase" box, or "none of these words", to boot.


They appear to be avaliable, but are they? There is such a thing as 'fuzzy
logic', but with Google it's turned to mush, total vapourware.

The only thing weird to me is that in the box titled "Any Of These
Words", you are supposed to explicitly type in an OR between all the
words you want - but that shouldn't be necessary, by definition.


Each box is basically a way to let people get the advanced search without the
direct methods. As follows..

First, know that the top box (All the words) in advanced search is actually
the same as the single search field on the main page, you can use the same
methods there, to invoke the behaviours of the other boxes on advanced
search.

Specifically, in 'Any of the words', you can say Yorkshire terrier, and it
will get you the sum of pages with yorkshire, plus sum of those with terrier,
minus sum of those with both. In other words, OR, as if you had written
Yorkshire OR terrier in the main box. (They don't state the OR is required in
the 'any of the words' field on advanced search, that's just what you have to
do in the main field).

Similar logic applies to exact phrases. You can say Yorkshire terrier in that
one on advanced, but obviously in the main field it must be done "Yorkshire
terrier".

What happens if you use the non-advanced (basic) Google search box and
type in a bunch of terms? I believe it defaults to an AND condition
(ALL terms must appear) - as expected. (And NOT an OR condition, which
would be wrong).


Exactly so, And you're right. (But you did see the insane results count that
I got, the moment I added the word 'assign' to a simple default AND-based
search?).

Suppose you want to diagnose a condition quickly enough so you can decide
whether or not to justify a car drive to a hospital. (I'm assuming it's not
so urgent that an ambulance is needed). You might have two symptoms,
headache, and fever. Obviously, differential diagnosis being what it is, you
should be able to NARROW the field if you get a couple more symptoms. BUT NOT
WITH GOOGLE. Which means that as its basic level, it is a disgrace, more
intent on gathering data and throwing spam from content mills like Ehow.com
at us, along with the rest of the garbage exhorting us to do anything but
what we need to do, than actually DOING what we need to do. Never mind that
Google aren't charging us, this is so damn stupid that if we don;t look,
think, question, and perhaps vote with our (digital) feet, we deserve all the
**** we get. The heap grows higher and deeper year on year, and NOT ONCE did
they ever offer an exact substring search that woudl allow fast and easy
precision to anyone who knew what they were looking for. Learning from what
Google finds is like trying to study in a bus station on Christmas eve.

The number of alternative search engines appears to be growing fast, after
having shrunk for some years. That clearly means that some people are serious
doing something about this now. Maybe some search engine SHOULD charge, that
way we might get some chance at one fulfilling of a contractual obligation
to its users.

On Mar 4, 8:16*pm, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Excerpt from an email I just sent...

c "1d array to 2d array" -convert*
About 1,780 results (0.06 seconds)

c AND assign "1d array to 2d array" *-convert*
About 497,000,000 results (0.29 seconds)

c assign "1d array to 2d array" *-convert*
About 501,000,000 results (0.07 seconds)

I already mentioned that the AND operator was implicit, and as the results
show, the difference is small. Relatively so, anyway!

An AND operator is supposed to LIMIT the field. Did those result counts look
ANYTHING like limiting to you?!

(The guy I sent it to had told me a couple of weeks back that the words in
Google were implicit OR combinations, but any look athttp://www.google.com/advanced_searchwill show it ain't so. You have to
EXplicitly do OR between words if you want that. But clearly he CAN be
forgiven for his error of judgement given what Google ACTUALLY do when we
EXPLICITLY demand a logical AND, or use the impl;icit one, to limit the
results.

Is this deliberate, or just plain indolent broken lunacy?! If anyone can
explain this Google madness, please do.

for me, seemes to default to OR

but, when added " " are there *and* google finds little info, they
tend to ignore the " " marks and give you all 3,000,000 results

At the top of that resulting list, is a little request to CLICK on and
do the search the way you intended.

Then, for me, it usually comes back and says 0 results. thus, the
reason for google to change what I asked for.

Robert Macy wrote in news:dc5d7b4e-47cb-4353-a544-
:

At the top of that resulting list, is a little request to CLICK on and
do the search the way you intended.


Trust me, I am entirely familiar with those. It's actually nauseating, the
number of times they do 'did you mean' when I know exactly what I meant.

Example: -conver*

Google-bleat: "Did you mean -convert*?"

That's just pathetic. They see an expression from someone who clearly appears
to know how to use a negation operator combined with stemming well enough to
place a wildcard such that it eliminates 'convert' and also 'conversion', and
despite making these rules up THEMSELVES, they fail to see them when they
bite them from behind, and instead assume we made a TYPO or a misspelling.
It's not as if we don't make errors, but it's our call, not theirs. We CANNOT
be precise anyway, if they won't let us, and they don't.

If the banal alternative is sufficiently high in the spam rankings that they
trust too much, they won;t even ASK me, they'll just switch out my search for
their inane interpretation so I have to explicitly demand them to put it
back! Sometimes even that fails and I have to work out even more stringent
limitations to force it to comply.

That's not 'helpful'. It's moronic.


When I am trying hard to learn to code, I often find myself battling with
Google instead of with the code! That's not what search engines are for!

Robert Macy wrote in news:dc5d7b4e-47cb-4353-a544-
:

Then, for me, it usually comes back and says 0 results. thus, the
reason for google to change what I asked for.


Seen that too, which I don't mind, if there really ARE no results.

I'm strict enough in my search terms that this happens often. But it's a
different matter when they shove a load of populist junk listings at me just
because they ARE so popular. They don't restrict that only for when no
results answer the intended search, I often have to force it back, and there
ARE the results I wanted, or as good as I'm ever likely to get anyway. This
isn't reasonable behaviour from Google, it's a nasty, venal little bait-and-
switch! They'd rather I clicked their ad-revenuue linkage than get me a
result on my terms, any chance they can get. They never used to behave this
way, and few other engines do, or ever will, probably. The smaller ones would
lose people, not gain them, if they treated them that way.

They owe me nothing, but the fact that I do not pay them is irrelevant. If a
search engine wanted paying for the precision I need, I'd pay. No search
engine has ever existed on a paid subcription basis so far as I know. It's
likely time for one to do it, one with its own webcrawlers and such, not the
usual Google-alike, Yahoo-alike, Bing-alike nonsense that is still too
common. I think the most sensible one I know of so far has the silliest name
(DuckDuckGo), but I could live with that. Come to think of it, 'Google' is a
very very dumb-sounding name too, only familiarity gave it credibility. And
the rest, almost all as daft, no?

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

I think the most sensible one I know of so far has the silliest name
(DuckDuckGo), but I could live with that.

To be fair, Ask.com's not too shabby either.