[Corpora-List] Google "region"-based searches

[Diego Molla-Aliod]

Google's (and Yahoo's) hit counts are estimates and you shouldn't rely on
them too much. I once tried to incorporate them to recreate Magnini et al's
work "Is It the Right Answer? Exploiting Web Redundancy for Answer
Validation" but I gave up due to the inconsistencies in hit counts returned
by Google and Yahoo. This was back in 2009 but I would be surprised if
things were different now.

Diego



On 28 November 2012 10:18, Trevor Jenkins <trevor.jenkins at suneidesis.com>wrote:

> On 27 Nov 2012, at 23:00, John F Sowa <sowa at bestweb.net> wrote:
>
> > In ancient times (pre 21st century), Google supported Boolean
> > expressions for searching.  But now it's impossible to control
> > their search in any predictable fashion.
>
> Google's implementation of Boolean expressions was never that good anyway.
> Their NOT (the - sign) never really worked as a Boolean NOT more of a
> "we'll disregard your request if we feel like it". Couple that with the
> lack of any (working) collocation features and it's a poor excuse for a
> text/document retrieval system.
>
> > But when I type just "enterprise integration pattern" by itself,
> > I get 114,000 hits.  When I add another word, the number should
> > decrease.  But the following combination gets 137,000 hits:
>
> There also used to be probably still is a hidden "feature" in that Google
> would terminate searches after some time slice. Even if there were more
> hits available you didn't see them. Used to be simple to demonstrate by
> submitting the same search request several times in quick succession never
> the same answer twice. The only numbers  of results that can believe are
> zero and one anything is practically non-deterministic.
>
> > Does anybody know how to bypass the Google heuristics and
> > force it to use a simple regular expression for searching?
>
> Sadly no. Other than using a search engine with a better search system
> behind it. But unfortunately Google has, for the moment, the largest cache
> of web pages and documents.
>
> Personally I question whether Google is still a search engine, more a
> targeted adverts engine these days. (Thank god for browser add-ons like
> AdBlockPlus, Ghostery, GreaseMonkey and their like for squelching those
> nasty adverts.)
>
> [I should declare a commercial interest here I worked for paralog who
> produced one of the best … no *the* best* text retrieval system, trip.
> Product still exists although I've not been associated with it for over a
> decade. But it still remains the best there is; if you can afford to
> purchase it.]
>
> Regards, Trevor.
>
> <>< Re: deemed!
>
>
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---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Diego MOLLA ALIOD                     diego.molla-aliod at mq.edu.au
Department of Computing          http://web.science.mq.edu.au/~diego
Macquarie University
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