When I started doing websearching in 1996 there were a few search
engines that supported NEAR. If you want hits on the name Bill
Bloggs, at the moment you can search "Bill Bloggs", this will miss
Bill W. Bloggs or Bill W Bloggs who may be the right lead. However,
Bill NEAR/3 Bloggs will find it and all approximations. At present a
Google search will swamp you with hits. Is there a way to do this in
Google or is there any other search engine that supports NEAR. Thanks |
Request for Question Clarification by
bobbie7-ga
on
23 Jul 2004 07:04 PDT
There's a Google API Proximity Search (GAPS) that lets you look for
two words within one, two or three words of each other.
Google API Proximity Search (GAPS)
http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi
Could you clarify if this is the kind of tool you had in mind?
Thanks,
Bobbie7
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Clarification of Question by
mugdig-ga
on
23 Jul 2004 09:14 PDT
Hiya Bobbie7
Thanks for your reply. IN my question I was talking about the boolean
NEAR which takes an argument /x where x is the maximum number of words
separating the subject words. So If I want Smith Valves but i dont
knowe if it is Smith Valve Company or Smith and Brown Valve Company I
can do Smith NEAR/3 Valve and this will get it. Using Google at the
moment I will get a rash of Smiths in listings sites just becasue the
word valve is a few thousand words away. In such a site I can also
restrict to town i.e Smith Near/10 Milwaukee will probably be enought
to encompass the town in the address area of the web page.
Webcrawler and others used to support NEAR but Google never has.
The Google API looks interesting but the one you showed me only goes
up to 3 words and then only exactly 3 words. This is the same as
using "Smith *** Valve" adn so doesnt give me a true working wariable
because I have to guess correctly the number of words that separates
them. If there is a tool that users NEAr then I wold be interested in
writing an API. Is this possible??
Many thanks
mugdig-ga
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Request for Question Clarification by
bobbie7-ga
on
23 Jul 2004 09:52 PDT
PROXIMITY ON GOOGLE
" For three-word proximity, GAPS runs six searches. Since the
four-word proximity requires 24 and five-word, 120, you can see why
the GAPS site has the three word limit."
"Fortunately, for tech-savvy searchers who'd like to try larger
proximity searches, the source code for the GAPS approach can be
downloaded, installed, and run on your own site. However, due to the
limitation of 1,000 searches per day through Google's API interface,
only proximity of up to six terms could be done with this approach."
http://www.infotoday.com/online/nov03/OnTheNet.shtml
Does this help?
Thanks,
Bobbie7
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Clarification of Question by
mugdig-ga
on
24 Jul 2004 02:42 PDT
Bobbi
No its not what we need. Firstly, is there any search engine that supports NEAR?
Secondly, is there a way to take the results of a google search and
count the distance between the hot words, discarding those over a
certain limit and returning the rest?
Thanks
Mugdig-ga
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Request for Question Clarification by
bobbie7-ga
on
24 Jul 2004 07:39 PDT
Unfortunatly I didn't find a search engine that supports NEAR.
Hopefully another researcher can help.
Best regards,
Bobbie7
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Clarification of Question by
mugdig-ga
on
25 Jul 2004 01:16 PDT
Bobboe
You replied about another search engine supporting NEAR but not about
whether we could write an API to filter returned results. Can you
reply to that?
Thanks
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Request for Question Clarification by
bobbie7-ga
on
25 Jul 2004 06:08 PDT
I really don't know if an API can be written to filter returned results.
This question is still open and perhaps another researcher will be
able to answer your questions.
Best regards,
Bobbie7
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