Hi there,
One can assume that Google Answers Researchers are pretty good at
using the features of Google's search engine, and are therefore
qualified to answer your question. It is fair to say that based on the
few comments and (previously) no answer to this question, that you
have written a great and accurate tutorial!
Because your content is already so very good, what I have found below
are only minor inaccuracies or ommissions. Brace yourself for some
petty nitpicking!
Proximity Searching
-------------------
"You can use the symbol * to search for terms that are within a
certain distance from each other on any page. This type of searching,
known as proximity searching..."
http://www.googleguide.com/page_8.html
I get the sense that you were about to explain the use of a sequence
of * symbols, but the example is missing. It is possible to enter a
query such as:
[ "Conquering the * * * * Grief" ]
This is great for when you know the start and end of a title or quote,
but are unsure of the words in between. By trying each of these
searches you will find the answer:
[ "Conquering the * Grief" ]
[ "Conquering the * * Grief" ]
[ "Conquering the * * * Grief" ]
[ "Conquering the * * * * Grief" ]
[ "Conquering the * * * * * Grief" ]
[ "Conquering the * * * * * * Grief" ]
[ "Conquering the * * * * * * * Grief" ]
Advanced Search
---------------
http://www.googleguide.com/page_9.html
It would be worth mentioning that after conducting a regular search,
when you click on Advanced Search, the query box is automatically
filled with your query. Knowing that you needn't enter the terms again
helps motivate you to try an advanced search. If you have searched for
a phrase, the phrase appears in the phrase box. If you have restricted
the search by domain, it will fill the domain box, and so on.
Search Results
--------------
"Google assesses relevance by considering over a hundred factors,
including... how often users click on a link to a page for a
particular query"
http://www.googleguide.com/page_12.html
From years of following commentary on Google and their search results,
I was under the impression that Google has always denied this. I could
be wrong. I'm just wondering whether you have some inside knowledge,
or has Google actually admitted to this somewhere?
Size
----
"The size of the text portion of the web page"
http://www.googleguide.com/page_12.html
It might be useful to mention that Google only looks at the first
101K. Many pages are larger than that, but Google will still list them
as being 101K. This is useful to know, because large web pages
containing obscure search terms are far less likely to be relevant
than smaller pages.
Google Directory
----------------
"...below the result's snippet you'll see an editorial description of the site..."
http://www.googleguide.com/page_17.html
It might be worthwhile elaborating on this. Editorial descriptions are
written by unbiased human editors, and lack any sales pitches or
extravagent claims. In general, a site being listed in Google's
Directory is less likely to be a spam site.
File Types
----------
http://www.googleguide.com/page_19.html
For quite a while IE would crash whenever I clicked on a PDF file and
Acrobat Reader automatically opened. Perhaps you could mention that
clicking on links to non-HTML files will start the associated program.
Even text files.
Also, although it is obviously better than nothing, sometimes files
converted to HTML can have portions that are quite unreadable.
Translation (typo)
------------------
"Google translates pages by computer. Machine translation is difficult
to do well and tends not to be as clear as human translation. But it
can give you the gist of what's written or how to write something "
http://www.googleguide.com/page_20.html
There's a full stop missing from the end of the above sentence. (I
wasn't intentionally looking for typos...)
SafeSearch
----------
"Google considered adding the capability to filter other controversial
content besides pornography, e.g., hate speech, anarchy, witchcraft,
bomb making, etc.."
http://www.googleguide.com/page_21.html
Just wondering if witchcraft is still controversial, considering how
much it has featured in popular culture recently (e.g. TV shows like
Charmed). Perhaps "devil worship" would be a better term to use?
As I warned, this is rather petty nitpicking!
GoogleBot
---------
"Google now rejects a large percentage of all the URLs submitted
through their add URL form."
http://www.googleguide.com/page_24.html
This is something else I have not heard of previously. It might put
people off using the Add URL form. Is this inside knowledge?
Google Groups
-------------
"For more on Google Groups visit groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html."
http://www.googleguide.com/page_32.html
This sentence, near the bottom of the page, is in a smaller font size
than it should be.
Google Directory
----------------
http://www.googleguide.com/page_33.html
Whenever I decide that Google's Directory would be a good place to
start, I find that searching the entire directory for a word brings up
too many results. But, as you state, drilling down to the correct
category can be difficult if you are unfamiliar with the topic. I'm a
former editor, but I still find the drilling down process long-winded
and painful. The best compromise I have found is to drill down the
first few levels, and then "Search only in..." to search only the
categories in that branch of the directory.
Google Answers
--------------
http://www.googleguide.com/page_37.html
Perhaps you could mention that the 50 cent lisitng fee will be charged
regardless of whether the question is answered or not. Then again,
that would be letting your readers know that there has been the odd
answer we haven't or couldn't answer. Hmmm...
Dates in Search Results
-----------------------
Sometimes pages that get re-indexed regularly have a date appear in
the search results. I didn't see this mentioned anywhere. Is this an
accidental omission, or is it deliberate because it has been such an
on again, off again feature?
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
nancyb-ga
on
21 Nov 2003 23:35 PST
{ As you may notice, I incorporated most of your suggestions into
Google Guide. Below are answers to some of the questions you raised in
your answer. My comments are enclosed is curly braces, like this
one. -- Nancy }
Search Results
--------------
"Google assesses relevance by considering over a hundred factors,
including... how often users click on a link to a page for a
particular query"
http://www.googleguide.com/page_12.html
From years of following commentary on Google and their search results,
I was under the impression that Google has always denied this. I could
be wrong. I'm just wondering whether you have some inside knowledge,
or has Google actually admitted to this somewhere?
{ See
://www.google.com/jobs/great-people-needed.html
"Harnessing the computational resources of our more than 10,000
computers to solve large-scale problems (e.g. not just indexing
documents but experimenting with new ranking algorithms, running
machine learning algorithms on terabytes of data, etc.)"
"We apply machine-learning techniques to learn relationships and
associations within the data that we have. Our spelling correction
system is a good example (spehl korector? phonitick spewling? who
needs a dictniary?). People searching for Britney Spears have clearly
found it useful on many occasions." }
GoogleBot
---------
"Google now rejects a large percentage of all the URLs submitted
through their add URL form."
http://www.googleguide.com/page_24.html
This is something else I have not heard of previously. It might put
people off using the Add URL form. Is this inside knowledge?
{ No, but I've heard and read that Google does reject those URLs
submitted through its add URL form that it suspects are trying to
deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or
links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking
(a.k.a., bait and switch), using sneaking redirects, creating
doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content,
sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So
I've changed http://www.googleguide.com/page_24.html to say just
that. }
Dates in Search Results
-----------------------
Sometimes pages that get re-indexed regularly have a date appear in
the search results. I didn't see this mentioned anywhere. Is this an
accidental omission, or is it deliberate because it has been such an
on again, off again feature?
{ Yes, it was an accidental omission, so I added "Date: (green)
Sometimes the date Google indexed a page appears just after the size
of the page. Dates are included when Google runs a fresh crawl." to
http://www.googleguide.com/page_12.html
Thank again for your wonderful feedback.
Nancy
|
