Search engine word delimiters: guy-macon, guy.macon, guy|macon, etc.

Posted by Guy Macon on October 12, 2005, 6:26 pm

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A question was raised in another thread about how Google treats
various non-letters such as ampersands, periods, etc. in search
terms. I recently gathered some data on this.

NUMBER OF SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS FOR VARIOUS SEARCH TERMS:
06 SEPTEMBER 2005

64,800,000
guy|macon
"guy|macon"
guy OR macon
"guy OR macon"

66,700,000
guy

60,100,000
"guy"

6,940,000
macon

4,280,000
"macon"

240,000
guy macon
Guy Macon
GUY MACON
guy macon <--(with an ASCII 255 in the middle)
guy`macon
guy+macon
guy,macon
guy<macon
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guy?macon
guy[macon
guy]macon
guy}macon
guy{macon
+guy +macon
guy AND macon
guy or macon
guy"macon
"guy"macon"
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15,100
guy-macon

14,300
"guy macon"
"Guy Macon"
"GUY MACON"
"guy macon" <--(with an ASCII 255 in the middle)
"guy`macon"
"guy+macon"
"guy,macon"
"guy<macon"
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"guy?macon"
"guy[macon"
"guy]macon"
"guy{macon"
"guy}macon"
"+guy +macon"
"guy.macon"
"guy'macon"
"guy/macon"
"guy\macon"
"guy=macon"
guy.macon
guy'macon
guy/macon
guy\macon
guy=macon
"guy-macon"

3,470
"http://www.guymacon.com/"
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1 http://www.guymacon.com/

364,000 guy*macon
742 "guy*macon"

875 GuyMacon
875 guymacon
875 "GuyMacon"
875 "guymacon"

35 "guy AND macon"
35 "guy and macon"

20 guy&macon
20 "guy&macon"

29 guy_macon
29 "guy_macon"

13 guyXmacon <--- Good search term for finding last year's test
13 "guyXmacon"

NOTES:

_ and & are treated like letters/numbers, not
as word separators.

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like spaces separating words

. ' / \ = are treated like spaces separating
words if they are within quotes. If they are
not inside quotes, they are treated as if they
are spaces separating words and are inside quotes.

Upper case and lower case are mostly treated the
same, but while and and AND are treated the same,
or and OR are not.

and and AND and OR are treated as words if within
quotes. or and Or and oR are always treated as a word.

"guy-macon" = "guy macon", but guy-macon gives
a result unlike any other search.

* as used in guy*macon and "guy*macon" give results
unlike any other search.

"guymacon" is the same as guymacon, but "guy" is
not treated the same as guy and "macon" is not
treated the same as macon.

Google has changed these rules several times.

Note that the rules may be different for URLs.

Non-dictionary words such as guymacon or guyXmacon are
treated differently from dictionary words such as guy
and macon.

Geographical words such as macon are treated differently
from non-geographical words such as guy.

Spell-checking the above list tells you which characters
your spell-checker sees as being word delimiters.

It is difficult to write a sentence that talks about the
difference between and and AND and And and & and "and"
and "AND" and "And" and "&" and 'and' and 'AND' and 'And'
and '&', and `and' and `AND' and `And' and `&', and ''and''
and ''AND'' and ''And'' and ''&'', and I really mean it! :)

--
Guy Macon
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http://www.guymacon.com/
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Posted by Stan Brown on October 15, 2005, 8:23 pm

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Dateline Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:26:01 +0000 from <Guy Macon
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I noticed this. What does "guy" mean, as opposed to the unquoted one?

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
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