Chris G wrote:

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 11:04:56AM +0000, steveydoteu wrote:

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Chris G wrote:

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I know this isn't strictly a Linux question but it is general computer knowledge.

I've been hunting for suppliers of the Foxconn G31MG-S motherboard over the past few weeks. There's one hit comes up in Google Products but I'm not entirely sure that I trust it so I've been doing straight Google searches as well.

I've just noticed that if I search for just "G31MG-S" (no quotes) and click on the "pages from the UK" button I get just 26 results whereas if I search for "Foxconn G31MG-S" (again no quotes) I get "about 244000", huh? I thought adding terms was meant to narrow the search.

In fact lots of the "Foxconn G31MG-S" results don't appear to have "G31MG-S" in them at all - is Google losing the plot and trying to be too clever for its own good? I don't want it second guessing me and offering results with only some of my search terms in them.

Why do you *really* need to post yet again to the list with a question of such nature.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Foxconn+G31MG-S%22&btnG=Sear...

Just a stab in the dark really, but does that not display numerous results with the entire phrase? Problem solved, move on, stop spamming the list.

Yes, I know that if I search for "Foxconn G31MG-S" with the quotes then it searches for the phrase as a whole. However there's no guarantee that every supplier puts the phrase as a whole on their web pages.

And even then I fail to understand why "Foxconn G31MG-S" (with the quotes) returns "about 6310" results and G31MG-S without quotes returns only 25 - it makes little sense to me.

I was really asking the question to find out how Google does things rather than asking for help searching for a motherboard. It just seemed to me that Google was becoming, as I said, too helpful and I thought it might be of interest to find what others thought and also if they could explain what was happening.

In fact, on thinking about it, I *think* what Google is doing is searching for "G31MG -S" (no quotes), i.e. it's looking for the string G31MG and 'not' the string S. Google treats - as a delimiter and never searches for it which is a nuisance sometimes. Yes, I think that's probably it as a search for "G31MG-S" with quotes produces more sensible results.

Well, thank you anyway for pointing me in the right direction to find out why Google was confusing me! :-)

Clearly your talents are wasted here, Chris. Perhaps you should check if Google have any jobs going.