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Search for Wiki also searches for Wikipedia

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, September 20, 2007
16 years ago6,864 views

While a search for "Wiki" on it's own does actually only search for Wiki, adding another word (eg. "Google" so you are searching for "Google Wiki") also searches for Wikipedia

http://www.google.com/search?&q=Google+wiki

I'm not sure on the exact search but what brought it to my attention was that one part that was highlighted was the start of "Wikipedia® is a registered trademark"

P.S. I'm not complaining 99.9% of the time I'm using this as a short cut to a Wikipedia article :D

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

If you don't want that, add + in front of the keyword. E.g.: google +wiki.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

This is just another example of Google's stemming technology at work.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I wouldn't call this stemming. Wiki and Wikipedia are not morphologically-related (Wikipedia is the name of a product). It's more like query expansion: including related forms, synonyms, related words along with a query.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I guess I don't know my terminology in that case. Google says this:

<< Google now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. >>

I just figured that "wiki" and "wikipedia" are similar to each other. And "wikipedia" is blatently based on the word "wiki".

Martin Porcheron [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

this is usually incredibly useful when searching for wikipedia articles (quicker than using Wikiseek/Google site command)..

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

OK sorry guess it does this with all queries with 2 or more words. "Goog Wiki" Also highlights "Google – Wikipedia" Just thought Google where assuming things

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Mrrix32: GOOG is Google's NASDAQ stock symbol, so it's not surprising that it's treated as a synonym for Google. What does surprise me is that this is only done for queries of two words or more.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

The query expansion depends on the context and a single word is not a context. Acronyms are expanded, though:
http://www.google.com/search?q=ms

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Roger
Yeah but Goog on it's own doesn't highlight Google, which was the point I was making

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