HocusPocus - 2:11 pm on Dec 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

Been lurking for too long and read far too many whinging posts. Time to contribute, or fog the issue, depending on your viewpoint.

I was interested in the Cat and Manx Cat searches. To recap, Google doesn't know what a Cat is a so returns site about domestic cats, cat scans, caterpillar tyres etc. Google for Manx Cat shows 'stemmed' words e.g. cat, cats, cattery etc.

Because it’s showing stemmed word my thoughts are that Google has learnt that a Manx cat is a kind of cat (domestic pussy), therefore it highlights the words related to Cat, the domestic type.

Lets say Google the machine has learnt that Christmas Gift is a specific type of gift. Is it returning Christmas Gifts and Gift sites because of this? Is it showing off by showing stemmed forms of Gift, i.e., highlighting gift and gifts because it knows that search you did means give me a specific type of Gift.

Keyboard Gift does not return broad/stemmed matches. Google doesn't yet know that a Keyboard Gift is a type of Gift. So it doesn't highlight Gifts and Gifts. Why doesn't it know? I don't know ...