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<TITLE>[Corpora-List] Re: problems with Google</TITLE>
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<DIV>John</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Even if you put double quotes around the wildcard character Google will
ignore it. When you search for:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"what does "*" mean"</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Google is actually searching for 2 'phrases': "what does " and " mean". You
cannot nest double quotes in Google so the double quotes around the * are
actually closing your initial quote and beginning a new quote, with the wildcard
ignored completely.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It may be the case that SOME of the pages Google returns will contain "what
does", followed by one other word, followed by "mean" but your query does not
ask for this specifically. Google could (and does) also return pages containing
"mean" and "what does" in the opposite order, or with multiple words in
between.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Similarly, "what does "*" "*" mean" is actually searching for 3 'phrases':
1) "what does ", 2) " " (a space), and 3)" mean".</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So, Google hasn't retained support for wildcards at all I'm afraid, and
this is why we are developing our own search engine in WebCorp, as
Antoinette Renouf mentioned yesterday.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Andrew Kehoe</DIV>
<DIV>Research and Development Unit for English Studies</DIV>
<DIV>Univerity of Central England in Birmingham</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.webcorp.org.uk/"
target=_BLANK>http://www.webcorp.org.uk/</A></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2>-----Original Message----- <BR><B>From:</B>
owner-corpora@lists.uib.no on behalf of John Milton <BR><B>Sent:</B>
Thu 17/03/2005 13:39 <BR><B>To:</B> CORPORA@uib.no <BR><B>Cc:</B>
<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Corpora-List] Re: problems with
Google<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<P><FONT size=2>I just discovered that Google seems to have retained some use
of the<BR>wildcard for words if you use double quotes with the asterisk. A
search<BR>for "what does "*" mean" and "what does "*" "*" mean" results MAINLY
in<BR>any one and two words respectively. If anyone else is using web
searches<BR>as language learning/teaching resources, this also looks
promising:<BR><A
href="http://www.findforward.com/">http://www.findforward.com/</A><BR><BR>John
Milton<BR>Hong Kong University of Science &
Technology<BR><BR><BR><BR></FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE>
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