Do longer search queries negativly affect the search engines' results?

Or does this much information really not exist on the web

[hannamyluv]

I have been wondering about this, mostly out of frustration. I have been writing some articles and have been looking for online sources to site.

Now, this is all information that I can find in books, I know it is legit and real and yet I am having the worst time finding online information in ALL of the search engines.

For example, the other day I wanted to find "houlocaust death toll" for an article on WWII death camps. The numbers vary greatly, so I wanted to see a variety of sites that have this information to see if I could get a ganeral consensus.

Every search engine's results, no matter what the query, quotes, negatives or preciseness gave me no more than one page of decent results. After that, the results fell apart.

Surely there are more than 20 sites on the entire web that site these numbers. I tried probably a dozen different word combinations.

Then I go to thinking, does longer queries do more damage than help these days. With LSI and similar technologies used by the search engines, are the results coming back weak because they are trying too hard?

For example:

cars = autos, automobiles, SUV, trucks
best = top, better, great
american = US, USA, United States, United States of America

For any one word searches of those queries, LSI makes sense, but when someone types in all three words, too much LSI makes for TMI? Laws of multiplication.

Is this making sense what I am saying?

Anyway, I was just wondering. It just seems like the longer the string (which means the better I know what I am looking for) the more scattered and off target the results are.

Or maybe this information really isn't on the web.

I was just wondering if this might be why.

[Pibs]

Good question. I've had similar problems when researching a book.

P

[commanderW]

Hello there - Web search is a complex everchanging phenomenon. I have been doing it 2- 16 hrs a day for over 2 years. On academic subjects, lately, for instance, it seems that Google results on 1st page are all commercial sites, except a wikipedia entry. I swear this wasn't the case 6 months ago!
There are at least 2 things you should do.
1 - Read a manual ( i've got "Google Hacks" & "Google & other search engines"). When using Google, if you put quotation marks around your string, the results are different. Results sans quotes can fall apart as every word & combination of words is returned. There are techniques using 'boolean' parameters. Each search engine has a different syntax & command options. The manuals detail all of this.
2 - The other is to use the search to get on a few sites, but then, to be really successful & hit paydirt, you may have to drill down through links. This is especially true for academic info because many of the institutional (libraries, universities, etc.) sites have their pages served in such a way that they are opaque to the search engines. If you even try to bookmark them, when you try to go back you get an error. So the only way you can get at info is from a link on another site by someone who found info page themselves by manually searching through the institutional site, or however.
- As for your particular search, you spelled the word holocaust as "houlocaust". If you did this on your search it skews returns. I just googled your phrase spelled correctly sans quotes & got at least 5 pages of target info. In the mix though, are other uses of the word 'holocaust'. Iraq war, Dresden bombing, the Sudan , a heat wave in france, then in california. So tailoring your search terms is a fine art. Phrases like 'nazi holocaust' or holocaust statistics or nazi holocaust statistics, w/ & without quotes, might give more better.
- I just tried nazi holocaust death toll ( one word longer than your string) & got all results targeted. 15 pages deep & if i checked more i'll bet the same. So, there you go. play w/ details like this.
- I am finding that the longer i search, the better i am at it. Most of the time,nowadays, the result i want is within the first 3 entries( not counting the last couple months where, as i say, the 1st page is now often commercial sites, even on academia.)! It certainly seems better than my efforts even one year ago, but it's hard to tell, when search engines are also evolving, & the web, & SEO is also evolving. So far, most of what i think is going on, on the web, & on my own computer, turns out to be pure hallucination!

[commanderW]

- I forgot to mention, i am a lousy speller & a worse typist. I have learned to look for a line right above the 1st entry which may appear, saying ' Did you mean_______? '. It's amazing how accurately this doodad gets it right. More than alternate spelling is checked. Once i Yahooed ( using the Google search engine. ) for reubens bistre. Results were weird. There is an artist named Paul Reubens. But the one who developed the technique of the bistre underpainting is named Peter Paul Rubens. The line above the returns read ' Did you mean Rubens bistre? ' When results seem like garbage, check for this line. It spares me alot of frustration.
- Also, to clarify my own largely succesfull technique - I search almost entirely w/ variations on keywords. I almost never have to use the fancy stuff from the manuals. Getting results from an initial search, learning something ( anything! ) from it, then doing a new search w/ new terms, & so on, always gets me where i want to go. As you will see, spelling holocaust correctly gives pretty decent results. But i noticed other uses of the word holocaust, & adding a word to refine the search yields what i think ( though i didn't check any link) are solid results for page after page.