Alexander Johannesen wrote:
|On 2/3/07, Hahn, Harvey <hhahn_at_ahml.info> wrote:
|> Google fit the American ideal of "bigger is better" (rather
|> than "better is better")--the old quantity-over-quality debate.
|
|Huh? Google was *tiny* when it started, and became successful because
|it *was* better, heaps better.
By "bigger" I'm referring to the quantity of results returned, not to
the size of the company. Same with "quality"--I'm referring to the
results set.
I still stand by what I said. Many professional searchers get better
results with other search engines and search tools and prefer them over
Google, although Google obviously has its place. (Google itself hardly
even uses its original PageRank algorithm any more because it was too
easy to defeat by commercial interests, something unanticipated in the
original doctoral dissertation. The company is constantly researching
new algorithms that can accomplish its goals while being resistant to
"tampering".)
I always use the Google "advanced search" to specify my searches as
exactly as possible, but I find that too often I still have to scan
through many pages of 100 results each before I finally begin finding
what I'm actually looking for. Due to the generally very large result
sets from searches, Google is a prime example of the greatest negative
aspect of keyword searches: lack of meaning. Words out of context have
no meaning--they're merely a series of characters. It's up to a Google
searcher to "impose meaning" when scanning results sets to see which
combinations of words have the meaning intended by the searcher. To
have a machine do this for a human is the "holy grail" of search engine
research.
Thank goodness Google raised its limit on an advanced search from 10 to
32 words (except in Google Groups and Google News)! (It permits a lot
more exclusions.) I wish they had advertised that a bit more--it can
make a world of difference with a complex search. The search [google
limit "32 words" site:google.com] returned NO results on Google itself
or its help pages (where the info ought to be). The only results refer
to mentions in Google Groups. The only Google "acknowledgement" of this
change is if you enter more than 32 words: where it used to say it would
ignore all words after the first 10, it now says, "xxxx (and any
subsequent words) was ignored because we limit queries to 32 words."
FWIW.
Harvey
--
===========================================
Harvey E. Hahn, Manager, Technical Services Department
Arlington Heights (Illinois) Memorial Library
Desk: 847/506-2644 -- FAX: 847/506-2650 -- E mailto:hhahn_at_ahml.info
Personal web pages: http://users.anet.com/~packrat
Received on Fri Feb 02 2007 - 21:21:33 EST