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More text in Google snippets possible?

Juan [PersonRank 0]

Sunday, December 12, 2004
19 years ago

Hi Philipp

Could you make a Google interface where the size of the snippet is larger, I mean you get more text around the keywords you entered?.

Can this be done using Google API?.

I am sorry to ask you to work more but isnĀ“t it interesting?. Many times we just look at the snippets for the info we need.

Thanks

Stephen Richardson [PersonRank 0]

19 years ago #

Dunno

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

It might be possible but not just with the Google API. The API just returns the same snippet as Google does, which is quite short in length. To get more text one would need to query the actual page and then display a larger snippet.

Andreas [PersonRank 0]

19 years ago #

I like the idea.

Juan is right: Often the info we are looking for can be found in the snippet.

However, querying the actual pages for larger snippets would make the search intolerable slow.

I can think of two other possibilities:
1) Two additional API queries for every search item using the beginning/end of the snippet with wildcards in order to make Google reveal another part of the page.
2) Parsing the Google cache of every site. Google's servers are quite responsive, so the time an extended search takes might be tolerable.

--
www.aiplayground.org

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Both ideas are good Andreas. I have been using the Wildcard approach you mention to extend the snippet in searches before (I think it was for FindForward.com, or another tool published here).

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