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news:web.4a1c6f626b94f33f34d207310@news.povray.org...
> I think I need searches to be more literal, and less semantic. Anyone
> know of a
> way to make google more literalistic, or have a better search engine?
First, use double quotes when you don't want Google to be too smart.
"buzzing" ps/3 returns what you want.
In any case, think about specific keywords closely associated to your topic
that are likely to be in your target pages and add them to your search. When
I was giving lectures about internet search in the early 2000s I was always
giving the following example: at that time, looking for swine feeding (I'm a
specialist in farm animal nutrition) always returned pages with Matthew 8:30
("Now there was a herd of many swine feeding at a distance from them")
instead of technical documentation about pig farming. The trick: add
"protein" to the search because this word is extremely likely to be used in
the target documents and completely absent from the Bible. The example no
longer works now but the trick never fails.
Note that Google semantic search seems pretty much in its infancy and more a
buzzword than anything else: right now, the bulk of the search seems to be
done after lemmatisation of the input (i.e. it goes back to the canonical
form of the words) with some phonetic algorithm to find probable homophones.
G.
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gregjohn wrote:
> Can anyone figure out how to google up the example files for shapes.inc,
> which will tell me the syntax for using Rounded_Box_Things?
>
> Of course, there probably isn't a Rounded_Box_Thing, but I want the syntax
> for
> whatever there IS. I have instead found a whole lot of incorporated
> companies with the word "Shape" in their name.
>
> I think that this shows why I hate semantic search. The computer assumes
> all the other things you could possibly want besides what you typed in
> verbatim,
> and goes to dig them up. Once I had a "buzzing" sound in my PS/3.
> Searching for "buzzing" sound and PS/3 brought up hundreds of entries for
> some service or website called "Sony Buzz".
>
> I think I need searches to be more literal, and less semantic. Anyone
> know of a way to make google more literalistic, or have a better search
> engine?
Google tries to be smart and shows me results in my local language first.
Which, for programming stuff, are usually less useful results.
Another interesting one:
I challenge anyone to find useful information about COM, using Google.
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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] gmail com> wrote:
> First, use double quotes when you don't want Google to be too smart.
> "buzzing" ps/3 returns what you want.
>
Hmmm. That problem was actually a frustration from my memory of several months
ago. Your idea works (I already *knew* that) ;-) , but interestingly,
**today**, even plain ol'
Buzzing sound ps/3
works sufficiently well without quotes. Could folks clicking on those X boxes
actually make google smarter?
> In any case, think about specific keywords closely associated to
> your topic that are likely to be in your target pages and add
> them to your search.
Okay, how about finding the syntax for shapes.inc's rounded thingies using
google?
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gregjohn wrote:
> I think that this shows why I hate semantic search.
It's usually more of a problem when the search results you're looking for
aren't actually indexed.
And my favorite screw-up was naming it "C# .NET" Hey MS, could you possibly
have picked a name for a technology that would be harder to search for?
Maybe something consisting only of hyphens and spaces?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
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Gilles Tran wrote:
> In any case, think about specific keywords closely associated to your
> topic that are likely to be in your target pages and add them to your
> search.
Or, alternately stated, remember that Google indexes answers, not questions.
If you don't know what the answer looks like already, you're unlikely to
find it.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Another interesting one:
> I challenge anyone to find useful information about COM, using Google.
Heh. Hmmm....
com site:msdn.microsoft.com
Does that count? ;-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!
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web.4a1c8f9a910979c334d207310@news.povray.org...
>
> Okay, how about finding the syntax for shapes.inc's rounded thingies using
> google?
shapes.inc povray rounded example
G.
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Gilles Tran wrote:
> Note that Google semantic search seems pretty much in its infancy and
> more a buzzword than anything else: right now, the bulk of the search
> seems to be done after lemmatisation of the input (i.e. it goes back to
> the canonical form of the words) with some phonetic algorithm to find
> probable homophones.
When I was at college, my classmates were so stupid that they thought
that a "homophone" was somebody who approves of gay killings. :-P
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4a1c96ea@news.povray.org...
> Gilles Tran wrote:
>> In any case, think about specific keywords closely associated to your
>> topic that are likely to be in your target pages and add them to your
>> search.
>
> Or, alternately stated, remember that Google indexes answers, not
> questions. If you don't know what the answer looks like already, you're
> unlikely to find it
.
Yes, people tend to use general search terms as if the search engine was a
real person with actual semantic abilities (and a real person is able to
deduce or ask for missing context). Instead, I told them to imagine what
sort of document would contain the answer and derive search keywords from
that. I nicknamed that "empathy search" since one had to put oneself in the
shoes of the writers of the target documents. Sometimes this requires doing
preliminary searches for identifiying the proper vocabulary. All of this is
less useful now because Google has become extremely efficient but that's
still handy for difficult searches with a lot of noise.
G.
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Darren New wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
>> I think that this shows why I hate semantic search.
>
> It's usually more of a problem when the search results you're looking for
> aren't actually indexed.
>
> And my favorite screw-up was naming it "C# .NET" Hey MS, could you
> possibly have picked a name for a technology that would be harder to
> search for? Maybe something consisting only of hyphens and spaces?
I'm sure Google had to add a special case in order to find "C++". Or maybe
it uses the sheer amount of results having it. It would usually ignore that
punctuation.
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