On 2017-12-10 14:09, Paul Eggert wrote:
Brian Inglis wrote:
72/ 425 82/198 Irish+Summer+Time+IST ... 55/ 322 31/ 77 Irish+Standard+Time+IST These two queries have too many false hits to be useful. For example, here are the top ten hits for the first query (I used google.com from UCLA), preceded by codes indicating what these pages say about the abbreviation IST ("std" means Irish Standard Time, "sum" means Irish Summer Time, "---" means no opinion): std https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ireland --- https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/ist-ireland --- https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ireland/dublin std http://timebie.com/timezone/irishindia.php std https://www.worldtimeserver.com/time-zones/ist-3/ --- https://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_IE.aspx --- https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ireland-dublin-to-ist sum https://www.horlogeparlante.com/time-zone-IST.html sum https://www.sitesworld.com/time/ist-(irish)-to-azost.html std http://www.ireland.com/en-us/about-ireland/once-you-are-here/time-zone/ So, even though this query attempts to count web pages that call IST "Irish Summer Time", its ten highest-ranking pages suggest that "Irish Standard Time" is twice as popular as "Irish Summer Time". Evidently the query is too broad, and Google's algorithms find so many pages on the general subject of Ireland and time and summer that it's double counting pages. We must therefore discard the results of those two queries, as they're not really counting what we are interested in. no site site:ie query > 61/ 388 19/ 61 "Irish+Summer+Time"+IST ... 55/ 312 32/111 "Irish+Standard+Time"+IST 53/ 399 9/ 18 "Irish+Summer+Time+IST" 51/ 391 20/ 66 "Irish+Standard+Time+IST" These queries are better, but I get waaay different results from you when I query from UCLA. I get: (no site) site:ie 1 0 "Irish+Summer+Time"+IST 4 1 "Irish+Standard+Time"+IST 1 0 "Irish+Summer+Time+IST" 47 20 "Irish+Standard+Time+IST" and this is an even bigger win for "Irish Standard Time" than the earlier results I posted. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how you do a query? Here's how I did it: I visited https://www.google.com, and pasted this into the search box: "Irish+Summer+Time"+IST
I find it easier to deal with and modify the search parameters directly in the URL query string for consistent search results to scrape: just (re-)move the '"'s or paste-select-cut between Summer and Standard, to ensure other parameter settings are unchanged. The URL "+" appears as " " in the search box and vice-versa " " in the search box appears as "+" in the URL. This is in the URL encoding spec for the query string parameter value default application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type, also requiring literal value "+" be URL-/%-encoded as "%2b". That is what those query strings contain instead of "+" or " ", and they appear to be disrupting the search. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada