A is for....

radio game show had a segment where contestants were to guess the "top result on google", given various first letters. answers that i recall were X = xbox, Y = youtube, D = dictionary.com, etc etc.

wherein i was left to wonder -- since WHEN can google handle wildcard searches, and how do i do one? if i input "x" alone, i get a page of "x" only results, interspersed with some questionable "words" -- xfiles, xtreme, xclusives, etc. xbox is below them.

if i input "x*" or "x**" etc, i get similar results, albeit with a lot of the leading "x"-only entries gone. xbox still down a ways.

i considered the idea that human eyes went down the list looking for the first "real" word, but if that were the case, xbox wouldn't really cut it either. more like "x-rays", currently on page 3. and i think that's only on there b/c x is a prefix of sorts -- will an entry like "xavier" or "xenon" EVER appear in an "x" search?

so WHAT are they referring to, and how do i do it? for YEARS now i've been wanting to do wildcard searches, but have failed to figure out HOW.

 

I don't think they were referring to wild card searched. They were referring to "the most common search hit among all the things in the English language that begin with the letter x".

And I don't know how to do wild card searches, since I've never needed them.

 

Are you sure that "top result on google" meant top of the page?

Could "top" have meant the word that gives the most results?
Xbox: About 792,000,000 results
Xtreme: About 138,000,000 results
Xfiles: About 5,500,000 results

It might also be possible that "top" meant the most searched word beginning with that letter
Xbox, youtube and dictionary.com would seem to be correct results if that is the case but I think the "About ######## results" is more likely what was meant.

By the way, have you seen this Google Guide which also has a PDF download if you want @
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html

 

that's a GREAT guide!

still not sure how to get results like that, MadMal, short of trial and error. what did you search on to get those xbox/xtreme/xfiles results?

yeah, first hit, top hit, hit w highest numbers, wassa diff? isn't google (in THEORY aniwes) ordered from highest to lowest, once u get past the sponsored links?

speaking of search quirks, how does one search for a "%" sign in w7? i had a handful of files labeled "name1 (87%)", "name2 (42%)", "name3 (68%)" etc. and i wanted to find them. search couldn't handle "%", ")" or "%)", even if i put them in quotes.

what's the trick?

-----
re: lounge, that's fine w me, but i STILL don't understand where questions about google, MS, facebook, etc. go. obviously if i'm asking about a sorting algoritm, that's a software issue from the gitgo. but, granted, it's google's software, not mine....

i figured lounge was for non-computer stuff.

:confused

 

er... Googling "How to Search Using Wildcards in Google" gets http://google.about.com/od/googlepowersearches/qt/wildcardqt.htm :-D

 

not the clearest of articles, is it? very first line asserts that "-ed", "-ing", and "-s" are "single letter"s. and those are suffixes aniwes -- would heat also produce a hit like "heather"? methinks not.

which is pretty much the same issue of "x" yielding "xbox".

btw, when the audience reacted poorly to one of the answers (maybe espn, which beat out ebay for top "e" search), the host retorted "no, it's true - go ahead, try it yourselves".

so the host/writers actly consider the search method OBVIOUS!

 

I tried the same on bing:confused

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b214/Rikky_/Googlewildcardsearch.jpg

 

Just enter the one word, when I search xbox then under the search text box is written About 180,000,000 results (0.13 seconds)

I think the aim of many spambots is to flood the internet with 'catch words' (my term) so they appear in a lot of 'results'
I assume Google and probably all search engines are aiming for 'relevance' rather than 'quantity' to combat this and provide more 'relevant' results.

 

how does that tell you anything about its place on the hypothetical "x" list? there could be one item above it; there could be 500 items above it.

again, the show host -- as well as the audience, it appears -- were somehow searching on "x" and reading the results.

 

Ok, gotcha.
I thought the examples you gave "xfiles, xtreme, xclusives" were some of the multiple choice answers but obviously they are not.
(Too much coffee I think :-o )

So my corrected answer is, I don't know :confused

 

sori if i wasn't clear - no, it wasn't multiple choice; just asking contestants to guess which word "comes up first".

those alternates (xtreme, xfiles) were words which i myself witnessed "coming up first" (ahead of xbox) when i attempted to search on "x".

btw, what's the deal on "i feel lucky"? i thought they did away with that, but i still see it there, and functional.

i considered that maybe THAT is how they did it, but i get "xtheband.com" doing it that way. so THAT's not it either.

 

Google Instant?
I went to Google Options and selected
Use Google Instant — predictions and results appear while typing
After that I type just the letter and the instant results are as follows

D = dictionary.com is the top (first) result
Y = youtube is the top result
X = xbox 360 is the top result

 

ooooh...u da man!!!! well done!

now, where's jimmy hoffa?! :-D