Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Google Advanced News Search bug

The Google Advanced News search page has several bugs.

Go to the Google Advanced News search page. In the with at least one of the words field enter this:

"Airedale terrier" "Tabby cat"

These keywords are designed to run a search for articles about Airedale terriers or Tabby cats. Click search. On the results page, the search box incorrectly displays this:

"Airedale OR terrier" OR "Tabby OR cat"

Google inserted the literal OR into two exact phrase match keywords. The search engine now needs to find matches for either of these highly unlikely exact literal phrases: "Airedale OR terrier" or "Tabby OR cat".

I've never seen an animal called an "Airedale OR terrier" or a
"Tabby OR cat".

On the same results page the "results" line displays a different incorrect query:

Airedale | terrier | Tabby | cat

This search would look for results with any of these kewords: Airedale or terrier or Tabby or cat.

Click the Advanced News search link to go back to the Advanced News search page.

In the with at least one of the words field a third inconsistent query is displayed:

Airedale | terrier Tabby | cat

This query has now deleted the OR between the terms Airedale | terrier and Tabby | cat and displays "|" symbols that probably should not appear in the with at least one of the words field.

In the Advanced News search page, click search. Now the search box on the results page displays this bug:

Airedale OR | OR terrier OR Tabby OR | OR cat

On the same page, the results line displays another different and incorrect query:

Airedale | OR terrier | Tabby | OR cat

The Google Advanced News has added many bugs to the original query in the with at least one of the words field which was this:

"Airedale terrier" "Tabby cat"

Note that these bugs are different from the bugs I mentioned here:

Here is my original SETI research.

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