![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Deneb on March 22, 2006, at 13:10:13
The Google searches don't find all posts. This means that I was right about my post number being too low. I'm pretty sure I've made more posts than 484 as Deneb.
I don't spend nearly as much time on PsychCentral, yet I've already accumulated 856 posts.
For a while, this post, http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051206/msgs/586508.html couldn't be found. It simply disappeared. Now for some reason it's back up again.
Google doesn't turn up anything for the thread number 526125 or 547929, even though they exist:
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050628/msgs/526125.html
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050828/msgs/547929.html
That is just a small sample of what Google misses. I'm sure you can find more examples of what Google misses.
Anyways, I'm not sure that anything can be done about this, but I just thought I would point it out.
Deneb*
Posted by Deneb on March 22, 2006, at 14:12:11
In reply to Google searches are incomplete, posted by Deneb on March 22, 2006, at 13:10:13
I decided to do a bit of an experiment. I tried using the thread/post number to search for 10 posts on this page. 100% were not found. This suggests that Google only searches amongst archived posts and not recent posts.
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/621843.html
621843
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/621962.html
621962
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622074.html
622074
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622222.html
622222
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622330.html
622330
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622410.html
622410
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622597.html
622597
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/622724.html
622724
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/623213.html
623213
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060317/msgs/623327.html
623327
Not found-------------------------------------------
I then randomly (as randomly as I can...which is probably not random at all) searched for 10 archived posts. 6/10 were found. This suggests that Google is only able to find 60% of the archived posts based on post number.http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010403/msgs/59074.html
59074
Foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20051208/msgs/589461.html
589461
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20030426/msgs/224098.html
224098
Foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20041128/msgs/423296.html
423296
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20050811/msgs/541984.html
541984
Foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/grief/20030903/msgs/258302.html
258302
Foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/health/20050929/msgs/562491.html
562491
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/newbs/20040812/msgs/380189.html
380189
Foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/child/20050226/msgs/463679.html
463679
Not foundhttp://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030529/msgs/237902.html
237902
FoundConclusion: Google is not able to search for all archived posts using searches based on post number.
New question: Is Google able to search for all posts a particular poster has made?
I'm not going to go through the archives to count exactly how many posts I've made, but I highly suspect that Google misses most of them.
Deneb*
Posted by Deneb on March 22, 2006, at 14:28:20
In reply to Re: Google searches are incomplete, posted by Deneb on March 22, 2006, at 14:12:11
Actually, a better question to ask would be whether or not Google searches only within archives that have been archived for a certain amount of time.
To test this I could find and search for posts in each month/year and record the number of "hits" for each month/year's archives.
That will take an inordinate amount of time to do, but one day I may attempt it. Not now though, I have to study, EEEK, procrastinating once again.
Deneb*
Posted by notfred on March 22, 2006, at 17:12:11
In reply to Re: Google searches are incomplete, posted by Deneb on March 22, 2006, at 14:12:11
> I decided to do a bit of an experiment. I tried using the thread/post number to search for 10 posts on this page. 100% were not found. This suggests that Google only searches amongst archived posts and not recent posts.
Rihjt, that is how google works. Pages have to be up for a while before the spiders walk them.
Posted by Dr. Bob on March 23, 2006, at 11:43:47
In reply to Re: Google searches are incomplete, posted by notfred on March 22, 2006, at 17:12:11
> Pages have to be up for a while before the spiders walk them.
Some old posts don't come up, either. I don't know why.
BTW, have you seen the policy regarding changing posting names?
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faq.html#names
Thanks,
Bob
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Administration | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.