"Ungoogleable" ???
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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title). When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title). When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title). When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title). When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
#SupportHeForShe Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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You should have used Bing! :laugh: List of 180 Songs With Rock in the Title[^]
DuckDuckGo also gives the same result.
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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title). When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
Years ago my brother-in-law made me look for "The Sound of C", a song he remembered from his childhood. I guess Google's gotten that much better since then, because right now the very first hit brings back the actual music video for the song. Back then...it was pretty much like looking for Vin Diesel's "XXX" (without being able to include Vin Diesel as part of the search term). By the way, in this particular instance, the C's gotta stand for "crap". I've not included the link to spare you from that earworm. This would make a good survey topic...what *are* your ungoogleable terms?
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DuckDuckGo also gives the same result.
Yes, but giving useful and usable results doesn't make money for google! Get with the program. eh?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Years ago my brother-in-law made me look for "The Sound of C", a song he remembered from his childhood. I guess Google's gotten that much better since then, because right now the very first hit brings back the actual music video for the song. Back then...it was pretty much like looking for Vin Diesel's "XXX" (without being able to include Vin Diesel as part of the search term). By the way, in this particular instance, the C's gotta stand for "crap". I've not included the link to spare you from that earworm. This would make a good survey topic...what *are* your ungoogleable terms?
Over the years, Google has been through so many variations of "search languages" - interpretations of quoting, plusses, minuses and whathaveyou, and variants of fuzzy matching, that I have given up. I came into Information Retrieval before Google - even before AltaVista! - and "grew up" with the ideals of completeness and precision: Strive for a result that contains all the documents that the user wants (the completeness part), and only those of interest to him (the precision part). Today, that ideal has been replaced with one of "Use any measures available to generate as high hit count as possible - only be sure include at least one (semi)relevant hit in the first page of twenty entries, because that is all the majority of users care to look at". In pre-google days, there was an IR search language (I believe that it was/is an ISO standard) for specifying not only "exact this string", but also that terms should appear e.g. wihin the same sentence, or paragraph, or separated by at most 'n' other words, etc. I belive that AltaVista offered an "advanced search" option handling this language. But using that search language required a certain level of training. Common man really doesn't care much for learning to use advanced tools; everyting shall be immediately available. So Google, with its totally dumbed-down search for anything that resembles anything that you mention, won the hearts of the public. Obviously, the ability to claim a minimum of two million hits, whatever you ask for, is essential to the marketing. I am not sure that this idea of mine for a party game is original: Set up teams, give them one search term, and see which team can generate the lowest google hit count when combining this with two other terms, restricted to some dictionary. It doesn't have to be Encyclopedia Americana - it could e.g. be limited to words appearing the latest edition of your company's marketing magazine. You could vary the game by giving not one but two "mandatory" search terms, and by varying the number of "freely chosen" terms from the accepted sources. I never carried this through as an actual party game, but when I suggest it, it always provokes a combination of laughs and recognizing nods.
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A recent thread in this forum complained that a particular issue was "ungoogleable" because of the vagueness of the words involved. This reminded me of a song I played in high school pep band that I tried to Google a while back and couldn't figure out how. The song title was ["A" Rock] (without the square brackets - I added them as pseudo-quotes because the double quotes ARE part of the title). When I try to Google this, Google ignores the quotes, discards the "A" as an article adjective, and simply returns results for "rock" (which of course give me millions of results unrelated to this song). Any suggestions as to how I might find information about this song, if such even exists?
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Unrealistic user requirements: there is no song called "A Rock". Prior art: The Rock.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Over the years, Google has been through so many variations of "search languages" - interpretations of quoting, plusses, minuses and whathaveyou, and variants of fuzzy matching, that I have given up. I came into Information Retrieval before Google - even before AltaVista! - and "grew up" with the ideals of completeness and precision: Strive for a result that contains all the documents that the user wants (the completeness part), and only those of interest to him (the precision part). Today, that ideal has been replaced with one of "Use any measures available to generate as high hit count as possible - only be sure include at least one (semi)relevant hit in the first page of twenty entries, because that is all the majority of users care to look at". In pre-google days, there was an IR search language (I believe that it was/is an ISO standard) for specifying not only "exact this string", but also that terms should appear e.g. wihin the same sentence, or paragraph, or separated by at most 'n' other words, etc. I belive that AltaVista offered an "advanced search" option handling this language. But using that search language required a certain level of training. Common man really doesn't care much for learning to use advanced tools; everyting shall be immediately available. So Google, with its totally dumbed-down search for anything that resembles anything that you mention, won the hearts of the public. Obviously, the ability to claim a minimum of two million hits, whatever you ask for, is essential to the marketing. I am not sure that this idea of mine for a party game is original: Set up teams, give them one search term, and see which team can generate the lowest google hit count when combining this with two other terms, restricted to some dictionary. It doesn't have to be Encyclopedia Americana - it could e.g. be limited to words appearing the latest edition of your company's marketing magazine. You could vary the game by giving not one but two "mandatory" search terms, and by varying the number of "freely chosen" terms from the accepted sources. I never carried this through as an actual party game, but when I suggest it, it always provokes a combination of laughs and recognizing nods.
Google's search results are always tailored towards an attempt to sell you something. Filtering generic search results against the profile they've collected on you as a consumer and only returning what they think is the most relevant. More often than not, I'm searching for API documentation. So that fancy algorithm is completely lost on me when I'm searching, say, for Directory.GetAccessControl(). Honestly, Bing isn't looking all that bad these days.