the problem is is that

[Benjamin Fortson]

Lynne, I spot-checked a few of the hits and they were accurate, so maybe
the problem has been fixed. Actually, I use Altavista all the time and
have never encountered the problem of which you speak, for some reason.

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Lynne Murphy wrote:

> Someone just wrote (and I deleted too soon!) that 'the problem is is that'
> gets 700 hits on (I think) Altavista.  I tried using Altavista for exact
> word matches a while ago and found that even though I'd put the words into
> quote marks, it still ignored the words that are not supposed to 'count' in
> a search, like 'the' and 'is'.  I wrote to them complaining about this, so
> maybe it's fixed, but I'd be cautious about trusting that number with out
> checking the websites it's 'hitting'--especially the ones that are lower on
> the list.
>
> Lynne
>
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Lecturer in Linguistics
> Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
> School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> phone +44-(0)1273-678844
> fax   +44-(0)1273-671320
>