Stop Google secondguessing me?

[GrofLuigi]

It happens mostly with punctuation marks - it ignores them. One would expect if I put something in quotes, Google should not try to modify ANYTHING inside. But it does.

Blatant example:

"perf.dll" -"perf dll"

gives no hits.

"perf.dll" gives helluvalotta hits for "perf dll".

So the question would be:

How do I stop this?

And while I'm at it, another problem with Google:

Gives many hits that don't contain the searched string. If I open the 'cache' link, it says "these terms appear only in links pointing to this page". So I ask:

- Why would I want to see any pages that do not contain the searched term?

- Why doesn't it just give me the pages where that term is linked from?

- Isn't that just a marketing gimmick to get me to that page?

GL

[MrCobra]

Have you tried perf:dll as your search term?

[Woomera]

Have you tried perf:dll as your search term?

nice trick,i didnt know it.thanks

[GrofLuigi]

Have you tried perf:dll as your search term?

Now I have, and it's the same - gives a lot of hits for "perf dll" too. I guess this is something like filetype:dll?

BTW, this thread is also in the hits.

GL

[mark]

I got slightly different results using perf+dll

DL

[Tripredacus]

I'm just annoyed that it doesn't support full on Boolean like it did when it first came out...

Ebay is annoying with the secondguessing as well.

[MrCobra]

Have you tried perf:dll as your search term?

nice trick,i didnt know it.thanks

Glad to help. There's a PDF/Word document floating around somewhere that lists what types of queries (undocumentd by Google) to use to find more specific and accurate search results and various other odds and ends. I'll do some searching and post the link back here when/if I find it again.

Have you tried perf:dll as your search term?

Now I have, and it's the same - gives a lot of hits for "perf dll" too. I guess this is something like filetype:dll?

BTW, this thread is also in the hits.

GL

I did a search for perf:dll, and while it did return results for "perf dll" as well, it did return only 310 results, whereas doing a search for perf+dll returned over 100,000. I'd much rather have look through and deal with some extraneous results than to wade through thousands upon thousands of results.

Edited March 22, 2008 by MrCobra

[GrofLuigi]

@MrCobra: Thank you for your feedback, but this was just an example. I was looking for general solution (I'm not searching for anything about perf.dll). My question was how to search for an exact string. I've also seen that .pdf and according to the above it's not true (anymore?). Maybe they started to cater for the general audience ONLY and it's time to search for a new search engine (how does one do that?)?

GL

[Tarun]

Odd, earlier I searched for a dll and it returned the results just fine. The dot and all.

[GrofLuigi]

Ok, another example (and not to be related to files):

How do I find the string "find.this" while Google not showing me the results for "find this"?

One would expect that exact search is just that... exact.

GL

[MrCobra]

@MrCobra: Thank you for your feedback, but this was just an example. I was looking for general solution (I'm not searching for anything about perf.dll). My question was how to search for an exact string. I've also seen that .pdf and according to the above it's not true (anymore?). Maybe they started to cater for the general audience ONLY and it's time to search for a new search engine (how does one do that?)?

GL

I was only using it as an example. At the current moment, I couldn't really tell you if a general solution exists. I haven't really thought about it much until I saw this thread, but there were (are?) ways to use Google to get exact matches for search queries.

I will keep an eye out for information as I browse around and will post back as appropriate.

Sorry that I couldn't be more helpful at this time.

[mark]

Googleguide Overview

Search operators

Student handouts at UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley about search engines

UC Berkeley "Finding info on the Web"

10 Google search tricks Don't forget to look at what people have responded with to possibly find other tricks.

How to search for people

Search the Web Anonymously

5 things Yahoo can do but Google can't

Hope this helps.

DL

Edit: I Googled for these results.

Edited March 25, 2008 by DL

[GrofLuigi]

DL, thank you for the links. They are valuable and interesting (I've read them all, including the readers' comments), but my question still remains unanswered. I knew most of the stuff before, and I'm not interested in hacking search engines (although sometimes I am ).

GL

[mark]

I was curious about the links I had posted because I didn't know that much about search terms and operators. One caught my eye. I tried this- "allintext:+perf.dll" (use without the quote marks and you get slightly different results without the + sign) I got exact results on most pages and the others had "perf dll" side by side like in the quotes. Oh, and your thread here made it to the first page of results. Haha.

DL

Edited March 26, 2008 by DL