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Weird Google search problem

Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:35 am
by curious_guy (imported)
I did this search on Google: site:eunuch.org/alpha matty girl birthday

It should have found this story: "The Change of life I will feel forever"

http://www.eunuch.org/Alpha/C/ea_165106the_chan.htm

It did not find the story. When I added an asterisk to the end of "girl" (site:eunuch.org/alpha matty girl* birthday) It did find the story.

The story has the word "girl" in it sixteen times. It also has the words "girls" and "girly". I thought maybe the author had typed a numeral one (1) instead of an L at the end of "girl" but when I use the search function of Firefox with "girl" it finds the words.

I thought that there might be some invisible formatting code after each occurrence of the word "girl" so I looked at the source code of the story page and I did not see anything strange after the word "girl".

Does anyone have any idea why this search did not work? The only thing I can think of is that there is some sort of obscure bug in the Google search code that makes it not find words when there are exactly 16 of them.

Re: Weird Google search problem

Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 8:08 pm
by kristoff
curious_guy (imported) wrote: Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:35 am I did this search on Google: site:eunuch.org/alpha matty girl birthday

It should have found this story: "The Change of life I will feel forever"

http://www.eunuch.org/Alpha/C/ea_165106the_chan.htm

It did not find the story. When I added an asterisk to the end of "girl" (site:eunuch.org/alpha matty girl* birthday) It did find the story.

The story has the word "girl" in it sixteen times. It also has the words "girls" and "girly". I thought maybe the author had typed a numeral one (1) instead of an L at the end of "girl" but when I use the search function of Firefox with "girl" it finds the words.

I thought that there might be some invisible formatting code after each occurrence of the word "girl" so I looked at the source code of the story page and I did not see anything strange after the word "girl".

Does anyone have any idea why this search did not work? The only thing I can think of is that there is some sort of obscure bug in the Google search code that makes it not find words when there are exactly 16 of them.

It did not work because you did not curse Microshaft while dancing on one foot, and waving your arms in the air, as Goooglie chugged.

I can put the same search parameters in 5 times and get five results. Change the order of the parameters, and the same thing happens.... Talk to Googler about it....