13 December 2007
Google’s Odd Mathematics
Google’s algorithm may be the most advanced searching algorithm on the planet, but it would appear that simple math skills are evading it.
Google exact match, as defined by Google themselves, is data returned from a search:“that precisely matches the keyword you have chosen — without any additional words or letters before, between, or after the keyword.” when searching Google normally, search results will return in order of relevance from pages that match the keywords you have entered or simply contain the keywords. They may not be in the same order or even together on the page. An exact match search, using “KEYWORD or “KEYWORD” will return pages, in order of relevance, which have the keywords entered in the exact order that they have been entered, with no words between them. So, when searching for ‘careers advice’ we obtain 3,820,000 results - as shown below:
When doing an exact match for ‘ “careers advice” ‘ we obtain 34,000,000 results - as shown below:
Google is telling us there are more pages that contain just the phrase ‘careers advice’, in that exact order, than there are pages which contain the two terms in any order (including that exact order).
