Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Google Search

(1/4) > >>

Deozaan:
Did you know that Google handles all searches as if they were performed with lower case letters? In other words, Google searches are case insensitive.

This means that searching for an editor called "StarED" gives results about staring, or being stared at. I can understand why Google would do this by default, but even their "Advanced Search" lacks the option to match case.

Okay, so I admit that I've been using the Google Search Engine for years and never had this issue affect me before, but... how the smurf can they not think this would be useful or even required in some cases?

JavaJones:
Yeah I've run afoul of this before. Not sure how difficult it would be for them to implement it though, so I'm not too annoyed about it. If I find out it would be fairly easy and they just don't do it for simplicity's sake I will be mad though. ;)

- Oshyan

alivingspirit:
It wouldn't be difficult to implement, but it would use a ton of Google server space. In order to create case-sensitive search, Google would have to index the words based on the way they are capitalized, adding to the amount of space it would take to store each word and possibly slowing down search. Knowing Google, if they really wanted the feature they would have it, but its not as simple as you would think.  

JavaJones:
That's what I figured. When I said "how difficult it would be to implement" I really meant how much of a negative impact it would have. I know from a technical standpoint the actual search function for case sensitivity is not complex, but doing it against their huge database of site content, yes it might have an impact in search performance. Of course if it was only available through the Advanced interface that would cut down a lot on its use.

- Oshyan

Deozaan:
If they already have a large database of searches indexed, why can't they just search all results of the case insensitive index for the matching case sensitive search?

I still don't get what the problem is. Especially as an advanced search option that is disabled by default. I wouldn't mind if it went a bit slower.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page