To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 15:09:51 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: John Hopkins googled . . .
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Tue, 07 Jan 2003 14:20:00 -0500 "Michael Walsh"
<MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu> writes:

> >ronkean at juno.com 01/07/03 10:40AM
> >I get 705,000 hits for John Hopkins University (not in quotes),
> and 80,800 for "John Hopkins University" (phrase in quotes).  "Johns
> Hopkins University" (in quotes) gives 764,000, and Johns Hopkins
University
> (notin quotes) yields 931,000 hits.

>
> Even more amusing is going to news.goggle.com and searching for
> "John Hopkins University."
>
> One of the hits is a Baltimore Sun piece - they should know better .
> . .
>

But it would probably be better to try that at news.google.com .

I should have mentioned that when I did searches for John Hopkins
University, whether in quotes or not, it seems like almost all of the
hits were actually for Johns Hopkins University (spelled correctly).  I
had thought that google searches for phrases in quotes would seach for
the exact phrase only, case insensitive, but it seems that in this case
the elves at google have set it up so a search for "John Hopkins
University" also includes results for "Johns Hopkins University".  It's
possible that this is under a more general policy where words ending in
's' are also searched for with the 's' dropped, since an ending 's'
usually denotes a plural or a possessive.  So if someone searched for
'cat vision', 'cats vision', 'cats' vision', 'cat's vision', 'vision of
cats', or 'vision in the cat', they would get just about the same
results.

Ron Kean

.

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