Search of the Use of Words in Web

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around techniques for effectively searching for word usage in Google and other search engines. Participants explore various search strategies, including the use of operators like quotes and the vertical bar, as well as issues related to search result pagination and potential country-specific filtering.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests using double quotes around search terms, such as "explain idea", to refine results.
  • Another participant mentions that the "+" sign used to indicate required words may no longer function as expected.
  • Several participants discuss a peculiar behavior in Google where navigating between search result pages yields inconsistent results.
  • One participant raises the possibility of country-specific filtering affecting search results, citing an example related to internet censorship in China.
  • There is a discussion about the effectiveness of the vertical bar "|" operator compared to "OR" in search queries, with some participants conducting experiments to compare outcomes.
  • One participant expresses interest in how words collocate rather than just their frequency, questioning the utility of n-grams for this purpose.
  • Another participant notes that using Google advanced search can help find pages with all variations of a word, including different tenses.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on search techniques, with no clear consensus on the best methods or the reasons behind the observed behaviors in search results. Some participants agree on the utility of certain search operators, while others question their effectiveness.

Contextual Notes

Participants mention limitations in search functionality, such as the potential obsolescence of certain operators and the impact of regional differences on search results. There are also unresolved questions about the interpretation of search operators and their practical applications.

mech-eng
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I would like to ask you about search of the use of the words in Google or other search engines. For example if I want to search how "explain" and" idea" are getting together, how can I search this?

if I write just explain idea in Google there is one in some results but not another. For example one result is "From the fact that a given idea." here as you see there is not explain or explained.

What about trying (explain | explained) idea ?

Thank you.
 
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Use double quotes: "explain idea"

It used to be that a + sign before a word expressed the required presence of that word, don't know if that's still the case.
 
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DrClaude said:
Works fine for me.

Can you go from 20 to 21 ? Why cannot I ? Because of country difference?

Thank you.
 
BvU said:
Not in my Chrome browser. perhaps you have a different number of results per page ?

Good to see the double quotes are still there (and seem to have usurped the + sign functionality. the - sign can be useful too.

There are 10 results in each page but isn't going back to 15 still a strange behavior when somebody going from 20 to 21 ?

Thank you.
 
mech-eng said:
Can you go from 20 to 21 ? Why cannot I ? Because of country difference?

Thank you.

It could be. I was able to jump to the next page and the next after that without issue.

I used this version of your search string replacing "google.com.tr" with "google.com"
 
  • #10
mech-eng said:
Can you go from 20 to 21 ? Why cannot I ? Because of country difference?
I clicked on the link you gave, therefore I ended up on Google Turkey. I guess you need to clear you cache or something.
 
  • #11
DrClaude said:
I clicked on the link you gave, therefore I ended up on Google Turkey. I guess you need to clear you cache or something.

The posters query references google.com.tr explicitly.
 
  • #12
There's definitely something the matter with this website. When I return to p 20 after paging forward to 31 (nonexisting now and then), I get a different list.
 
  • #13
There may be country filtering going on. In China for example, sometimes searches just fail because the page about to be displayed has something controversial on it.

I remember my niece running into trouble when trying to pull up the cornell.edu website in China to apply for college. She would get connection resets because the home page of Cornell had an article about a former student and now Taiwan politician would be visiting the university to give a talk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China
 
  • #15
cosmik debris said:
https://books.google.com/ngrams is a great place to search for the occurrence of words.

I am not directly interested in their occurrence actually but instead interested in how they are used and with what words they collocate. I do not know exactly but I think ngram just gives a graph of use frequency.

Thank you.
 
  • #16
Can the character "|" used in Google?

Thank you.
 
  • #17
I did a simple experiment and it seemed to work

Try Rock | Hudson vs Rock Hudson

The search results are different with Rock Hudson coming up first and then a rock reference and then a Hudson reference.
 
  • #18
But for the search, would "|" and "OR" be the same? If it is the same with "OR", then In what situations can | be used so that it will be helpful for the search?

Thank you.
 
  • #19
I think the or would be interpreted as a word to search on whereas the vertical bar operator is a metacharacter that would be interpreted as the logical or unless it was quoted.
 
  • #20
jedishrfu said:
I did a simple experiment and it seemed to work

Try Rock | Hudson vs Rock Hudson

The search results are different with Rock Hudson coming up first and then a rock reference and then a Hudson reference.

I am almost sure that your experiment is not enough so it does not work. Look at these searches:

https://www.google.com.tr/search?dc......0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..26.0.0...0.IkFVX9q_rVIhttps://www.google.com.tr/search?dc...0...0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0...0.j8OoubITd-khttps://www.google.com.tr/search?dc...0...0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..3.0.0...0.5A3NYLJpt4E

Thank you.
 
  • #21
mech-eng said:
I would like to ask you about search of the use of the words in Google or other search engines. For example if I want to search how "explain" and" idea" are getting together, how can I search this?

if I write just explain idea in Google there is one in some results but not another. For example one result is "From the fact that a given idea." here as you see there is not explain or explained.

If you use Google advanced search, on the first line it specifies: «Find pages with ... all these words:» which should give you the results you want (including all declinations of the words like explained or explaining). But this is the «ordinary» way of doing a search, i.e. just writing a set of words in the query. For me, it returned only pages with both explain and idea, except for Wikipedia pages that only referred idea because, basically, the pages "explain" what idea means.

You can also look at this Google support page to find a few extra tricks on how to refine your searches.
 

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