For anyone one looking for gift ideas in the UK a couple of friends of mine have come up with the very handy http://www.giftgen.com/. Suitable for geek gifts as well as all the other relatives.
It does "free" gift ideas as well, including things you can make.
As iantri pointed out, these googlings mean nothing as Google ignores the "@" sign. Actually, it doesn't ignore it exactly but seems to match it to whitespace and some other characters. Quotes don't help nor does "+". So a search for my old favourite dumping address, "x@x.com", matches "X / X-Com" and "X: X-COM" etc. (FYI x.com happens to redirect to PayPay.)
Can anyone:
a) Explain the behaviour of non-standard characters in Google;
b) Come up with a way to correctly search for an email address?
Here's something to start the ball rolling:
sl@shdot -> 9 Google results with only sl-shdot in evidence.
This seems to find "sl/.shdot" and "sl-shdot".
So I assume @ / . and - are treated as "any other characters".
Slashdot Mirror
For anyone one looking for gift ideas in the UK a couple of friends of mine have come up with the very handy http://www.giftgen.com/. Suitable for geek gifts as well as all the other relatives.
It does "free" gift ideas as well, including things you can make.
Can anyone:
a) Explain the behaviour of non-standard characters in Google;
b) Come up with a way to correctly search for an email address?
Here's something to start the ball rolling:
sl@shdot -> 9 Google results with only sl-shdot in evidence.
- This seems to find "sl/.shdot" and "sl-shdot".
- So I assume @ / . and - are treated as "any other characters".
sl-shdot -> 47- Appears to match slshdot and sl-shdot
- So it seems hyphens are just ignored in search criteria and results.
sl~shdot or sl$shdot or sl^shdot -> 22- Seems to be the same as a search for sl shdot
- I'd conclude these characters are converted to whitespace in results and search criteria. It would match "sl something shdot"
This discussion may be of interest too.