What's Wacky with Google?

There are always going to be oddities with any big online service, but this one seems to be persisting. Join the discussion in trying to figure out a pattern. For maybe a week, Google has been returning zero results or "1-1 of about xxx,000" for common searches. One-word searches seem unaffected, but there are certain two-word combinations of common words like candle truck or speaker bracelet. Reversing the order can affect searches too: motorcycle candles vs. candles motorcycle. The strange thing is that usually the 1 or 2 results found are to commerce sites. Read the Search Basics, compare your notes to GoogleWhack's, have fun looking for patterns, but remember that Google always returns slightly different results for different IP numbers.

(Update: 13:56 GMT by J : When I first posted this story it said the problems have been occurring "for several weeks at least" -- but it seems to be more like one week.)

Comments

Man!

[jeffkjo1]

I am so glad someone else noticed this!!! I've been so pissed I haven't been able to get any speaker bracelets recently. God google... forcing me to use other search engines to get my fix.

It's obvious

[LNO]

SkyNet is becoming self-aware.

Re:It's obvious

[Filik]

Yeah, and it has already aquired the targetting mechanism of Half-Life 2... 8)

Deja vu?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a glitch in The Matrix, of course.

Re:Google Zeitgeist

[Monofilament]

quiet fool! .. you've uncovered the true plot behind this slashdot posting.

No longer will we /. sites to take them down .. we will effect data mining for common searches on the internet.

Long live the Speaker Bracelet

Re:It still can't do phrase searches

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Is 100% accurate matching results to a phrase search too much to ask for a search engine?

Um, yeah. Actually, I don't know what you're talking about. Entering the phrase "to be or not to be" -- with quotes, so as to indicate you want the phrase, not just the collection of words -- yielded the first two pages of results all having that phrase. Not all of them were for pages on Shakespeare, but then again, that phrase is now deeply buried in the common memespace. If you make the search phrase

"to be or not to be" Shakespeare

you do indeed get results with the phrase and exclusively referring to Shakespeare. Oh, I get it. You don't like the idea you need to actually construct a reasonable search phrase. You're mad that Google isn't, I don't know, telepathic. Your best bet is the SFWIWNFWIS search engine -- search for what I want, not for what I say.

The real time search monitor

[martingunnarsson]

I've read that there's a real time search monitor in the lobby of Google's HQ. The nastiest words are removed, but other than that you can se exactly what people are searching for.
They have to be pretty confused right now, when thousands of searches for speaker bracelets, motorcycle candles and candle trucks show up on the display!

Re:"to be or not to be"...

[dracken]

2*b || !(2*b) is actually a tautology :P

ducks :P

Re:speaker bracelet two

[crail]

gm candle truck: Results 1 - 10 of about 12,100
fiat candle truck: Results 1 - 10 of about 5,200
audi candle truck: Results 1 - 10 of about 7,090
chrysler candle truck: Results 1 - 10 of about 18,400
ferrari candle truck: Results 1 - 10 of about 9,810
ford candle truck: Your search - ford candle truck - did not match any documents.

Looks like it's about time ford got on the candle truck bandwagon.