Google glitches?
Dave Wilton
dave at WILTON.NET
Thu Mar 29 16:54:48 UTC 2012
That's part of how Google "helps" you search. Quotation marks in Google,
contrary to what you might think, do not mean a character string search. It
means "give me results that kind of, sort of, approximately match the phrase
I type."
For the vast majority of Google searches, this is genuinely helpful. But it
significantly reduces the search engine's utility for any kind of lexical
research.
-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Joel S. Berson
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:30 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Google glitches?
I tried searching Google Books with a date range for "entered the * year of
his age" [quoted]. Some of the results highlight "entered into the <Nth>
year of his age".
I would think "into the" would fail my quoted search term. (It shouldn't be
a consequence of the *, since it's on the other side of the "the".)
Joel
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list