Query String Limits

now 10 words maximum

[jamsy]

In order to search for people using our copywritten text i would enter a few lines of our copy in to Google and do a search. This produces great results and shows exactly who is in breach of our copyright.

Interestingly though, I have just noticed today that the search query is now limited to 10 words and anything over the tenth word is ignored.

[RBuzz]

Wubba? Google has had a ten-word query limit for a long time. Did I miss something?

Here's a hint, though: Google doesn't count wildcards in its query limit. Search for

"one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve"

and then search for

"one two three * five six seven eight * ten eleven twelve"

And you'll see what I mean.

[2_much]

Hey RBuzz, excuse the ignorance but I don't know what the wildcard is/means. Also, I don't understand how/why the two queries are different. Mind explaining?

Finally, why would Google limit the query, what's the purpose of this?

[Slade]

The two queries are different because the asterisks appear as stopwords to Google. The first query will attempt to match every word in the order they appear in the query. The second will match the first few words, the second few words, and the last few words, in the order they appear, seperately. Hope that makes sense...

[RBuzz]

> Hey RBuzz, excuse the ignorance but I don't
> know what the wildcard is/ means.

Some search engines, like AltaVista, support "stemming." Stemming is being able to put a wildcard character (like *) at the end of a string and match words that begin with that string. So if I searched for moon* I'd get moon, moons, moonlight, moonpie, moonstruck, etc.

Google DOES NOT support stemming. Instead it supports a "Full word wildcard" -- *. When you use * in a phrase Google substitutes any word for the *. So if you searched for "three * mice" you'd find three blind mice, three blue mice, three thousand mice, etc.

> Also, I don't understand how/why the two
> queries are different. Mind explaining?

The first query is a phrase. The second query is also a phrase, but with the substitution of two wildcards for words. It's handy to do this when you're searching for common phrases that you're sure will always be presented the same way. For example:

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party."

This is a sixteen-word phrase and as such you can't search for it on Google. But what if you substituted wildcards for the common words in it?

"Now is * time for all good men * come * * aid * * party."

Now you can search for the entire phrase because Google does not count wildcards against the ten-word query limit.

> Finally, why would Google limit the query,
> what's the purpose of this?

I'm not sure, but I suspect it has something to do with resource allocation.

Hope this helps,

RBuzz

[jamsy]

Wubba? Google has had a ten-word query limit for a long time. Did I miss something?

Like i said - i have always been able to until recently search far in excess of 10 words at a time. Maybe it was localised to the .co.uk database?