Timeline for Case-sensitive search engine
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
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| Apr 17 at 7:54 | answer | added | knb | timeline score: 1 | |
| Apr 16 at 20:45 | comment | added | Kotlopou | Thanks. (2) is what this question was trying to do, and I think that wraps it up. | |
| Apr 16 at 19:46 | comment | added | Jeff Zeitlin | ...more You ultimately have at most four choices: (1) Live with it, and use the capabilities they provide to the best of your ability; (2) Find a provider (search engine in this case) that has the capability you're looking for, and use that instead; (3) get into the business on your own, and provide the capabilities you feel are lacking; or (4) make the business case to one of the existing providers to include your desired capability. | |
| Apr 16 at 19:43 | comment | added | Jeff Zeitlin | The major search engines don't do it because - as you acknowledge - in most cases it is irrelevant. Regardless of what you might perceive as the 'trivial' cost of including the capability, the companies building these general purpose search engines have to weigh the cost of providing a capability vs. the return on investment - in other words, it's a business decision that will be affected by what they see as their business model. more... | |
| Apr 16 at 19:40 | history | edited | Kotlopou | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Remove sour tone
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| Apr 16 at 19:37 | comment | added | Kotlopou | I think I brought it on myself with the unnecessary sour tone of the question. I've made an edit to make it more neutral. | |
| Apr 16 at 19:36 | comment | added | Kotlopou | I'm sorry, we seem to be talking past each other. I understand your view, but personally find the task a niche but uncomplicated one. Strings that differ in case are different. Search engines ignore that difference because it is usually irrelevant, but it is technically trivial to not ignore it if directed. It turns out that you can search case-sensitive in code (webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/141507/…), and it's just a "case:yes" search operator. I'm asking whether there is a search engine with that feature, but for all of the web. | |
| Apr 16 at 11:58 | comment | added | Jeff Zeitlin | Search engines can't read your mind, and they don't know the meaning of what they're searching for you; they're just matching patterns. "Fine-tuning" your search using inclusives and exclusives isn't a "trick"; it's the intended operation of the search engines in question. You can get better results without providing narrowing terms if you use a search engine that's specific to the field of study/industry/whatever that you're interested in - but for any given field, such an engine may or may not exist, and may not be as complete, even within the subject, as a general engine like Google. | |
| Apr 16 at 11:48 | comment | added | Kotlopou | My point stands as well: this should not require tricks. I am looking for a search engine that can search for a string without ignoring case as an alternative solution for situations where the tricks don't work. I used this example to specify intended behaviour, not as the specific problem I want solved. That said, I still don't know how I would distinguish between "GaP" and "energy gap" without throwing away legitimate results that hapen to mention the energy gap of GaP and not spell out "gallium phosphide". (The behaviour is the same between Google Search and Google Scholar.) | |
| Apr 16 at 10:43 | comment | added | Jeff Zeitlin |
The point I was trying to make stands: narrow down your search terms, either by mandating the appearance of certain terms (put them in quotes, in Google - gap "gallium"), or by explicitly excluding terms that absolutely indicate invalid results (with the leading hyphen, in Google - gap -retail -clothing). You can also use partial words for matching in most search engines, e.g., phos as a keyword would cover phosphate, phosphide, phosphorous, and so on. The trick is to narrow your search by including related relevant terms and excluding related irrelevant terms.
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| Apr 15 at 19:39 | comment | added | Kotlopou | @JeffZeitlin Actually, in this specific case, I was interested in gallium phosphide and the biggest problem is "gap", because that word often comes up in semiconductors. I ended up searching for "gallium phosphide" and getting mostly correct results, but not all authors write out the full name, so I probably missed some useful articles. I'm asking this question because this situation where case makes a big difference is common, for example with the myriad acronyms made to spell a word, and the workarounds don't always work well. | |
| Apr 15 at 14:11 | comment | added | Jeff Zeitlin |
Have you considered using - with Google, at least - some of the advanced search features, such as exclusion (for example, if you're not interested in Gallium Phosphide, you might do better by searching gap -gallium)? The broader your search term is, the more likely it is to generate irrelevant results.
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| S Apr 15 at 13:23 | review | First questions | |||
| Apr 16 at 9:47 | |||||
| S Apr 15 at 13:23 | history | asked | Kotlopou | CC BY-SA 4.0 |