francis
10th Jul 2004, 02:03 pm
I'm currently running a training session at work on internet/intranet skills. It's very interesting - we start at the *very* simple with "this is a monitor - if you turn it off, are you turining the computer off?" and the amount of people that don't know/aren't sure is surprising.
Anyway - I do a fair sized chunk of Google, but it seems to have changed the way it works in the last month or so (unless I'm going mad). Try these:
private (axa or bupa) (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=private+%28axa+or+bupa%29&btnG=Google+Search) - you now get a "Lowercase "or" was ignored. Try "OR" to search for either of two terms" message, so it's no longer case sensitive for this kind of search.
"popular diets" -atkins (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22popular+diets%22+-atkins&btnG=Search) seaches for documents containing the phrase "popular diets" but without the word atkins in it. Which is fine. However, you're also supposed to be able to remove phrases, eg: "popular diets" -atkins -"high carbohydrate" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22popular+diets%22+-atkins+-%22high+carbohydrate%22&btnG=Search), but when you try that, the amount of results actually goes up!
Searching for I Am Sam brings back 7,720,000 but excludes the word "I" as it is common. But if you force Google to search for "I" using +I Am Sam, the results drop to 6,740,000. How is that possible?!
Can anyone offer an explanation?
Anyway - I do a fair sized chunk of Google, but it seems to have changed the way it works in the last month or so (unless I'm going mad). Try these:
private (axa or bupa) (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=private+%28axa+or+bupa%29&btnG=Google+Search) - you now get a "Lowercase "or" was ignored. Try "OR" to search for either of two terms" message, so it's no longer case sensitive for this kind of search.
"popular diets" -atkins (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22popular+diets%22+-atkins&btnG=Search) seaches for documents containing the phrase "popular diets" but without the word atkins in it. Which is fine. However, you're also supposed to be able to remove phrases, eg: "popular diets" -atkins -"high carbohydrate" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22popular+diets%22+-atkins+-%22high+carbohydrate%22&btnG=Search), but when you try that, the amount of results actually goes up!
Searching for I Am Sam brings back 7,720,000 but excludes the word "I" as it is common. But if you force Google to search for "I" using +I Am Sam, the results drop to 6,740,000. How is that possible?!
Can anyone offer an explanation?