Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with google and search

How do I protect Ronnie Edwards?

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:58:04 -0800

I'm a female in the US, about to get married for the second time and taking my husband's name. Help me manage how my new name appears online before it starts to happen. Let's say that my first name is Veronica but I've always gone by Ronnie. Say my maiden name is Smith, my first married name is Jones, and my new married name will be Edwards. I have used Ronnie Jones, professionally and personally, for years. I intend to use Ronnie Edwards going forward.

Online, the name Ronnie Jones is associated with some things that I use daily (Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google, Flickr, and my website, which is, say, "ronnie jones dot com").

Overall, all the various permutations of my names (Veronica/Ronnie Smith/Jones) are linked with some things I'm very proud of (my photography), some that are embarrassing (like projects that I wish I hadn't gotten involved in that I don't have the ability to edit/modify), and some that I wish were private (like Spokeo knowing my relatives and my addresses and my income...)

In terms of information about me online, is it possible to keep just the good stuff with Ronnie Edwards and disassociate from the embarrassing/private stuff? If I just change my name from Jones to Edwards, won't EVERYTHING end up following me? Do I need to just disassociate completely and create brand new accounts everywhere?

How to keep video links from clogging google search results?

Wet Spot — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:13:20 -0800

How can I prevent video results from showing up in a Google search? For example, if I do a google search on "picasa os x 10.6.8 screen resolution", half the links on the first results page are youtube videos. If I want videos I can select "videos" instead of "web". But I can't figure out how to prevent videos from showing up in a regular web search. (I'm running Firefox on a MacBook Pro 10.6.8; I get the same results using Chrome.)

How do I keep Google from seeing which search result I clicked?

benito.strauss — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:34:36 -0800

Can I make my Google search results not pass through Google? When I search on Google I get back a page of search results, like I always have. But lately I've been noticing that every single search result has a link that passes back through Google. I used to see this occasionally, or for one or two of the top results. But for about the last week or two all results, all the time, have it.

As a specific example, when I search for "banana", the first result is for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana, and that's what shows up when I mouse-over the link. But "Copy Link Location" reveals that the link actually goes to

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBanana&ei=Q-O_ULPOLarj0gGL3oGoAg&usg=AFQjCNGfLvZflgtVMyz9dNeVmiIcwQfHdg

Obviously they are (optionally) recording something and then re-directing me to the site. I'd like to be able to just go directly to the site.

- I realize it's a free service and blue_beetle is right, but if I can stop it I'd like to.
- Your comment of "privacy is over, get used to it" is not an answer to my question.
- I've been able to survive without GreaseMonkey, and I've heard it can cause problems reading 3000+ comment threads, but maybe it's time to start.

Technical details: Win7, FireFox 17.0, NoScript extension, but google.com and gstatic.com are allowed to run, (NoScript indicates that all scripts are allowed on the results page). The re-directing links are there regardless of my cookie policy.

Does [Insert name here] write book blurbs? If so, for which books?

sdis — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 04:57:56 -0800

Is there a book blurb search engine, or something that will let me see if someone has ever written a book blurb, and what it was? (Or some clever way of googling Amazon's Editorial Reviews sections) I'm writing a book and the publisher has asked me who I'd like them to approach for book blurbs. I've been brainstorming on well-known people, and it would be very helpful to know whether those people have ever agreed to write book blurbs or not. Is there any way to find out using the magic of the internet?

Is Google still mostly about PageRank?

MrMerlot — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:35:50 -0800

How important is Google PageRank in relation to the updates in recent months with regard to Google Panda? In my job as a university lecturer, I come across people who claim to understand how Google works. They tell me that in the last few months that it has "really changed" and is now "much more about content". My understanding of Google is that its major innovation is the PageRank system, the one that counts links to a page as well as counting the the value of those links. But recently I have begun to wonder. So my question is as follows. Is Google PageRank still the most significant part of Google's search engine? is it the main idea to get across to my students?

How can I keep my Google results from becoming awful?

alligatorman — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 19:48:28 -0800

How can I block certain sites from Google search results while preventing Google from tailoring search results just for me? I've noticed that over time, my Google search results worsen and relevant links start dropping to the bottom while the noise comes to the top. I have to delete my cookies to resolve this, or log out.

This is probably related to the fact that I have "Use Personal Results" enabled, but I also need this in order to block unwanted results, like Yahoo answers.

How can I have both? I don't want Google to tailor my search results just for me, except for removing sites that I have added to the block list.

And I would rather not delete cookies often or log out just to search. I'd rather sift through Yahoo and Wiki Answer results if that is my only option. Plugins are acceptable. (I use Chrome)

How do I filter out e-mails with an empty To: fields in Gmail?

mxmm — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:14:50 -0800

How do I filter out e-mails with an empty To: fields in Gmail? I basically want to filter out e-mails that I receive but have an empty "To:" field in gmail (and from specific e-mail addresses) but I can't figure out how to specify it with Gmail's filtering search criteria boxes. You've probably seen these e-mails as To:undisclosed recipients, but when you look at the details it is because the To: field is blank. I'm quite familiar with creating gmail filters, but I just can't figure out what to put in the search box to make gmail look for To: fields with 'nothing' in them and every tutorial I've found online is about how to send e-mail like this, not filter out ones you receive. I've tried leaving all the search fields blank which finds all my e-mails, tried empty quotes and parenthesis, ie "" or () but it still returns all e-mails, and I've tried typing in "undisclosed recipients" but it didn't find these e-mails (unless those words were actually written in the To: field). Is it even possible to search for blank To: fields?

How Do I Limit My Google Alert Results to English Only?

JohnnyGunn — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:35:04 -0800

How do I eliminate foreign language results in Google Alert results? One of my many Google Alerts is a search for a name that apparently means something in Hungarian (?) and/or another foreign language. Sometimes all the hits are in a foreign language and I do not want to see any hit other than when the word/name comes up in English. Is there an operator or some way to tell Google I only want English results?

How do I change the location setting for Google search?

AngryTypingGuy — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:13:56 -0800

How do I change the location setting for Google search? I've relocated to another location and would like to change the nearby or location feature for web search in Google.

Thanks for your help!

Help me find a Google Desktop replacement

Susan PG — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:05:03 -0800

Please recommend for me a new search tool to replace Google Desktop. Ideally I want something that searches the full text of all files, that covers everything on my hard drive plus Google Docs. I want it to be fast, offer results in context, and have a simple interface that offers 'sort by relevance' and 'sort by date.' I use Ubuntu. When Google Desktop came out in 2004, it made my life immeasurably better. Previously, I'd been trying to manually organize all my files, which I was pretty bad at and hated doing. Google Desktop made it possible for me to search everything on my hard drive, fast, without needing to spend any time maintaining a structured system of files. Later I started using Google Docs, which kind of broke my system a bit, because Google Docs was the only thing I used that Google Desktop didn't index. Now Google Desktop's been discontinued, which means I am going to need to find something else.

Currently I'm using Google Desktop plus experimenting with Recoll. Recoll would superficially seem to meet my needs, but it doesn't index Google Docs or GMail, I'm not sure it's fully indexing all the files of the types it claims to encompass, and the ordering of results thus far seems bizarre.

A slightly broader question: what the heck are people using to search the cloud, and are they succeeding in keeping on top of everything?? I feel like my stuff is increasingly fragmented all over the place: it's making me crazy :-(

How do I get the old Google search results back?

FuckingAwesome — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:36:38 -0800

So, it would appear that Google have changed their search algorithms. Using search queries that would have previously returned hundreds of results I am getting a handful of results which are mostly irrelevant / gibberish. Any ideas how I can go back to the "old" Google? Thanks!

Don't Be Evil, but do be annoying

codacorolla — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:27:25 -0800

Where did Google's advanced search feature disappear to this time, and why do they keep moving it around? Is there any way I can edit my settings so that it's always in a nice visible place? Of course the direct /advanced_search URL is always an option, but I'd prefer to just be able to click. This answer is no longer relevant (unless maybe I'm in some beta test group or something), as the gear that they mention has disappeared from my main page.

Why does hitting 'enter' when searching redirect my browser?

Fidel Cashflow — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:02:38 -0800

Weird re-direct issue when searching Google... I'm having a strange issue whenever I search for something on Google where it seems to be re-directing or invoking some piece of JavaScript that seemingly does nothing.

It doesn't happen all the time; I can search using the search box on Firefox and have it work fine, but if I use Google.com, as soon as the page begins to switch into 'instant search' mode (When you start typing in characters in the search box) and I hit enter to search, I get one of the following -

(function(){})();(function(){})();

or

404. That’s an error.



The requested URL /sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=test&pbx=1&oq=test&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1093l1344l0l1552l4l4l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=c72a5663660767bd&biw=1249&bih=729 was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

If I don't hit enter, and just stop typing and let the instant search do it's thing, the results I get are fine. It's only when explicitly hitting 'enter' do I get a redirect to a 404 or the empty function blocks above. It's becoming increasingly annoying, as every time I want to modify a search result and forget not to hit enter, I get the error and then have to go back and re-remember what I searched for.

I'm running on Firefox 10.0 (this has been happening to me since probably Firefox 8) on Windows XP in a corporate, 'managed' environment. The only extensions I'm running are IE Tab 2 and User Agent Switcher 0.7.3

Is there a way to get Twitter search results back into Google search results?

aerotive — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:12:41 -0800

Is there a way to get Twitter search results back into Google search results? Sometime last year Twitter got removed from Google results. I found, in succession, a Greasemonkey script, a Stylish script, and an add-on that put the results back, more or less. All of them eventually stopped working.

So, anyone know of a script, addon, or other browser thingamajig that would put the results back? Something that gets updated would be also be nice.

It would have to work with Firefox.

Dammit I don't want to change my name

These Birds of a Feather — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:49:14 -0800

I have a unique name that, when my first and middle names are transposed, becomes a more common name that is now the moniker of a rather unattractive porn star. How do I fix Google results that turn my unique name into this porn-yielding other version? I discovered recently that if you search for my name in google images, google thinks you really want the transposed version of my name and that name is apparently the name held by a not so cute pornstar. I have nothing against porn for a variety of reasons, but this is not something I can really let go of given that I am job hunting right now and I work with children's media. ~~(and the lady is not as cute as I am.)~~ Is there any way at all to tell google to accept my unique name as, well, the valid, gospel truth so that the redirect-to-porn situation does not occur as potential employers google my name?

Anatomy of a Search

cashman — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:05:30 -0800

What are some good strategies for searching for the image of an old puzzle? I have asked here a few times over the years and come up with nothing, unfortunately. At this point I am ready to brute force it and just look at images of puzzles until I find the image of that puzzle. Previous methodology inside. I am looking for a puzzle image from a puzzle sold sometime around the early to mid 80's or before. I used think it was a circular puzzle, but now I think it was a regular puzzle that just had the meaningful parts in a circular image (like so).

-Regular puzzle with a circular border or circular puzzle
-Possibly split (above and below water) Underwater ocean/Sea scene
-Mostly black or dark
-Some kind of small house or cove or seahorse almost nearly in the center of it
-May have magic/fantasy theme elements

I posted questions to no avail in 2008 and 2009.
I looked through google images with keywords like circular, puzzle, and springbok.
I emailed Springbok, but they were bought from Hallmark in 2003 by Allied Products, and said they couldn't help with pre-purchase items.
I emailed the owners of the popular puzzle sites (oldpuzzles.com, and one or two others that have large puzzle galleries that I have gone through image by image). No solution-related replies.

What is a good method to go through large batches of puzzle images in the most efficient way? Google's image search isn't that speedy, and Bing's isn't that much better. Also with both of those there are a lot of extraneous images.

If I could, I'd download a zip file of every puzzle image and flip through the thumbnails or something. But what ideas do you have for ways I can do this most effectively, given that I know elements of the puzzle, and that I know I don't want images flowers and hillsides?

If it isn't apparent, I really would like to see this image. I don't need to own the puzzle. The image holds a special place in my mind because it was around at a really life-changing time for me.

Is this a real Google thing?

Corvid — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:34:11 -0800

Is this a real Google-thing or some kind of malware scam? Google search suddenly isn't working for me, sometimes. For the past 4 days, each afternoon at about 4:00 (and continuing for a couple hours), I've gotten a very puzzling result when I try to do a Google search. After I type in the search term and hit Enter, instead of getting the expected first page of search results, I get a mostly white page that asks me to type in a captcha, then says this:

About this page

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen?

Then it gives my IP address, the time, and this url:

URL: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cat+megacolon&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

The "why did this happen?" is a link, but Im hesitant to click on it. I can't. I just can't. Not unless Metafilter says it's OK. So, click, or don't click? I'm curious, of course, but also suspicious. My level of computer savviness is, uh, very limited, and I hate hate hate trying to fix things that have gotten bolluxed up. So I don't want to risk a click-and-bolux.

Any idea what this is all about? Is it really Google? Why could there be "unusual traffic?" I'm the only person with access to this computer. It's not on a wireless network. I haven't been doing anything unusual. Other times of the day, I don't get this weirdness. If I just ignore it, will it go away? I am not a robot. I swear. I do have a Roomba, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been using the internet.

What should I do?

Looking for "pre-filled" google search site

billyfleetwood — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:38:44 -0800

This question is about as meta as I think I've ever come up with. There's a site that allows you to send a link to a google search, and the resulting page shows the search being typed into google and completed. Maybe I'm having an idiot moment, but I can't think of any way to search for the site without using the words "google" or "search" which obviously obfuscate the results I'm looking for. Anyone know the site I'm referring to?

SEO Kings, help me please....my site is a squash and a squeeze

london302 — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:11:29 -0800

Calling SEO/Google Experts: I have a bloglike site for a new company (on Wordpress) and I am trying to make it SEO friendly. Hypothetically, lets assume that the site is about flying lizards and I have named it 'liz.ly'. Every day, new and well written content is added to this site so hopefully in the next few months it will start showing up at a respectable rank on google. BUT: Here are my questions about how the Google algorithm works:

1. If I want this site to rise up fast have I made a mistake by calling it liz.ly (liz only being part of the key word and .ly being an odd domain)?

2. Will it be worth re-naming it to something like myflyinglizard.com so it starts showing up when someone searches

3. Can I do a 'network' install of wordpress and map 2 domains on it? (I have only heard about it - is this going to be a problem)

Thanks in advance

If it's really "location, location, location," show me some locations.

resurrexit — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:45:50 -0800

Since Google Maps ended its real estate search function in February 2011, have any of you found a good replacement? I can't find anything like it. I live in Houston and, while the local MLS site (www.har.com) has a great map search function, I miss what Google Maps used to provide, which was sort of a broader aggregation of everything for sale, including what was on HAR. Red dots covered the map and showed you exactly where that house was for sale. Sometimes it was a little out of date (e.g., listing things that had sold months before), but still a great lead for those of us looking to buy not just within zip codes, but within blocks.

'site:'

nam3d — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:27:29 -0800

How can I use the Google operator "site:" through the Firefox 5 'Awesome Bar'?

Where does Google get the text it uses to describe a search result?

Alaska Jack — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:23:33 -0800

You know that text that shows up under the link in a Google search result? Where does it come from? Specific example follows, in which the text is nowhere on the website in question. Do a Google search for this term: 176th Wing. Directly under the link is text that reads:

A motivated flying unit, relevant in peace, indispensable in war, trained and ready to respond any place any time.

Where does this text come from?

* It's not anywhere on the site itself.

* It does appear in an Open Directory Project (DMOZ) page, here.

* It also appears in the cache of the old, discontinued Google Directory page here.

Is Google getting the text from DMOZ.org? Or are they both pulling it from some other place?

There's spam in Google's cache of my site

Addlepated — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:03:11 -0800

I have spam showing up in my website header and cached copy on Google's search results. When searching for my name, the first Google result goes to my firstnamelastname.com website, which is my professional portfolio. However, it's showing up in search results with "BUY Naltrexone ONLINE NO PRESCRIPTION" at the beginning of the description. If I go to Google's cached copy of my site, it has "BUY CHLORAMPHENICOL ONLINE NO PRESCRIPTION | BUY CHLORAMPHENICOL ONLINE NO PRESCRIPTION" across the top where my contact information should be. The first instance is a link to my webpage. There is no such spam on my actual, non-cached website.

Searching for these phrases shows that a lot of other pages have this stuff in their search results, too. What is this, and how can I get rid of it?

I'm running the most current version of Wordpress, if that helps.

Internet search engines that use boolean search?

dredge — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:10:16 -0800

Are there high quality internet search engines that recognize boolean rather than a natural language search queries? I hate natural language search. Well, sometimes I hate it. Often, I want to search using complex boolean-stlye queries, rather than the less focused method of just plugging a few terms in. I know that I can add precision to a Google or similar search by using quotation marks and other operators. However, often what I want is to use a more complex boolean string, for example: (((A or B or C) and D) or (E)) and not F. These are the sort of queries I learned to use on Lexis, Nexis, and Westlaw. I have not found a way to get Google to recognize this search syntax.

Ideally I would like to find something very similar to Google, that could search the internet or within particular sites, which would recognize my boolean search strings. Ideally, this search engine would also have defenses similar to those that Google uses to weed out content farms and other SEO gaming. Also, I'd like the search engine to be as "good" as possible, in terms of how many pages it reaches, speed, etc.

Apologies in advance if I am not using correct terminology here. This is an area where I know just enough to get myself in trouble...

Google is driving me nuts

lesli212 — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 22:33:45 -0800

Is there a way to automatically "force" Google to search for the words I typed in, without having to manually include "+" before every single term? I do sometimes utilize fuzzy search, but I'm finding that lately, it is doing more harm than good, and nearly every search requires me to go back and add "+". I've noticed that more and more of my searches return CRAP these days. For instance, my search terms include "semple" and I get results that include the word "sample" -- but not "semple". And I don't even get the benefit of the "Did you mean..." notification to alert me to the fact that Google didn't actually look for what I asked for. Quite often I can't tell a result is irrelevant because none (or just one) of my search terms show up in the preview, and it's not until I click and Cmd/Ctrl-F for a term that I realize it's not even on the page.

If this isn't an option somewhere in Google settings, is there a script or website I could use that searches via Google for what I type instead of what it thinks I want. Ideally, the script/service would auto add a "+" to all my search terms, but allow me to specify in the rare instance I want Google to go fuzzy on a word or term (like if I want Google to check my spelling). Bonus points if it also works for books, scholar, and other specialized Google search areas.

I realize I may just have to suck it up and learn to preface everything I google with "+", but at this point, alternate quality search engine recommendations would be much appreciated (besides Bing).