Why can't google find this article when I added two more keywords from the article. ?

February 22, 2007 1:15 PM

Google shortcoming? Why can't Google find this article when I added two more keywords from the article?

I googled for an article using the following keywords known to be in that article:

"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" "Washington and Wyoming"

I cannot find the article.

But when I take out the keywords "Washington and Wyoming" from the string and just use the remaining keywords to google, I can find the article.

Why is this so ?

Does this mean google did not index the whole article? This is a pretty short article. I know google has found longer articles before.

On a side note, I used jux2.com to find the whole string of keywords and no google results show up in the results list.

Same story with dogpile.com --- no google results show up.

Does this mean google really did not index the whole article , whereas yahoo does?


The article is :
"Survey: Cable TV Phone Users Satisified
By BRUCE MEYERSON, AP Business Writer
Wednesday, July 12, 2006"

Please enlighten.

Thanks a million

posted by cluelessguru to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Because the Google algorithm is fuzzy to reduce the amount of processing needed. Highly restrictive queries like yours are especially difficult to optimize. Basically they've come up with a system where 99.9% of queries are very fast but the other 0.1% fail.

(The actual inner workings of this I have no idea)
posted by cillit bang at 2:02 PM on February 22, 2007

If you use "Washingon and Wyoming", and both states appear, but not in that precise phrasing, the quotation marks could exclude that article.
posted by Saydur at 2:03 PM on February 22, 2007

Saydur, that's not the case here: this is the article clueless guru is talking about, which has "Washington and Wyoming" in the article.

I don't have an answer to the question, but I do have some additional interesting evidence:

"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications": 14 results (after clicking the "repeat the search with the omitted results included" link)
"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" Washington: 5 results, including the article I linked
"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" Wyoming: 3 results, including the article I linked
"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" Washington Wyoming: no results!

I wonder if it's related to the fact that the article I linked (as well as all others which should appear for the search) are Supplemental Results in Google.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:20 PM on February 22, 2007

Not to be pedantic but it doesn't look like you linked any articles in your question.
posted by chairface at 2:22 PM on February 22, 2007

More interesting evidence:

"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" site:lancasteronline.com finds it, but
cox washington wyoming site:lancasteronline.com does not!
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:29 PM on February 22, 2007

Oh, it gets even better. Just rearranging your search terms can affect whether you find the article or not. Check this out:

"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" "telephone service" wyoming indiana site:lancasteronline.com: Yep.

"meyerson" "cable tv providers" "customer satisfaction" "cox communications" "telephone service" indiana wyoming site:lancasteronline.com: Nope.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:36 PM on February 22, 2007

IIRC, Google can only search for up to 10 search terms. The original query has 11. But this still doesn't make sense to me, because surely it would match "Washington and", even if the last term was excluded.

Actually, no: they raised it to 32.

Google does only index the first 101kb of a page. But that can't be it, or Devil's Advocate's second and third searches wouldn't have worked.

Hmm.
posted by Infinite Jest at 2:41 PM on February 22, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

>Google does only index the first 101kb of a page.

Got a cite for that?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:48 PM on February 22, 2007

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/28899.htm
posted by bonaldi at 3:13 PM on February 22, 2007

Got a cite for that?

Sorry, the link I posted. Should have been clearer.

Looking into it further, it looks as though they lifted that limit a few years ago, as well. Mea culpa.
posted by Infinite Jest at 3:26 PM on February 22, 2007

I've noticed that searches like this don't work quite as well as they used to. I suspect Google's changed something.
posted by clarahamster at 5:39 PM on February 22, 2007