Request for quotes in search

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Bill Spight
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Request for quotes in search

Post by Bill Spight »

Sometimes I want to search for a short phrase -- often, actually. ;) What bugs me is when one of the words is common and is ignored. Even worse is when every word in the phrase is common, although the phrase is not, and no search is done at all. A recent example is "difference game". The search ignored "game" as being too common. But OC, "difference game" is not common. I was somewhat surprised that "difference" was not also ignored. But "difference" is much more common than "difference game", so there were many irrelevant results.

As I did in that paragraph. enclosing the phrase is quotes is a way of joining the words into a unit, and one that is in common use in search. Can we join the club? :)
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ez4u
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Re: Request for quotes in search

Post by ez4u »

Bill Spight wrote:Sometimes I want to search for a short phrase -- often, actually. ;) What bugs me is when one of the words is common and is ignored. Even worse is when every word in the phrase is common, although the phrase is not, and no search is done at all. A recent example is "difference game". The search ignored "game" as being too common. But OC, "difference game" is not common. I was somewhat surprised that "difference" was not also ignored. But "difference" is much more common than "difference game", so there were many irrelevant results.

As I did in that paragraph. enclosing the phrase is quotes is a way of joining the words into a unit, and one that is in common use in search. Can we join the club? :)

1st - Shouldn't this be in "Forum/Site Suggestions and Bugs" instead of "Off Topic"? Your request gets my vote. This has always made a joke of the search function. Since the search ignores ALL 2-letter words it is impossible to search for Gu Li, for example.

2nd - Until this is done, the best alternative is to try

Code: Select all

"difference game" site:Lifein19x19.com
in Google or your favorite search engine. In Google make sure to go to the bottom of the results page and rerun without any omitted results!
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Re: Request for quotes in search

Post by Uberdude »

ez4u wrote:1st - Shouldn't this be in "Forum/Site Suggestions and Bugs" instead of "Off Topic"?

[admin] moved [/admin]
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Re: Request for quotes in search

Post by xela »

Indeed, several years ago I pretty much stopped using the search feature on most sites, because Google using ez4u's method nearly always does a better job.
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