Google Verbatim Feature: Trivial Bugs

Google Verbatim is described here.

Bug #1: If you run a Verbatim search, you cannot simultaneously use any of the other search features such as time range or location. You can use one of those features if you surround each of your keywords with quotes instead of using Verbatim.

Bug #2: Verbatim means using an exact word-for-word phrase. Google Verbatim does consider search keyword order, but it often also returns non-verbatim search results.

Example: A Verbatim search for [Stephen King Book List] can also return searches for [List Stephen Book King].

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The Curfew Tolls The "Knol" Of Parting Day

Google announced that it is paring back on some of its free offerings such as bookmarks, and friend connect, and knol. 

Perhaps, Google is reverting to its founding tenet: Do one thing and do it really well.

Google Advanced News Search: Large Bug

The bug is that, as far as I can tell, users can no longer access the Google News advanced search page from a keyboard.

Previously, you could display the advanced news search page using a link that was accessible from a keyboard or by using a mouse.

Now, to display the advanced search page you must use a mouse to click an arrow within the search field. 

This raises an issue of accessibility for people who cannot use a mouse.

Google's Recipes Feature More Large Bug Examples

Previously, I posted examples of Google recipe feature bugs.

See: http://googcomments.blogspot.com/2011/09/googles-recipes-feature-some-trivial.html
 
Here are a few more bug examples:

Example #1:

Using the recipes feature
[fruit salad with pineapples apples oranges and bananas]
About 7 results

Regular Google search
[recipes fruit salad with pineapples apples oranges and bananas]
About 826,000 results

Example #2:

Using the recipes feature
[grilled sandwich with eggplant tomato cucumber and mozzarella]
About 9 results

Regular Google search
[recipes grilled sandwich with eggplant tomato cucumber and mozzarella]
About 190,000 results

Example #3:

Using the recipes feature
[iced tea with lemon mint and passionfruit]
About 7 results

Regular Google search
[recipes iced tea with lemon mint and passionfruit]
About 123,000 results

Google's recipes feature is described here: http://www.google.com/landing/recipes

Chrome Browser: Another Trivial Bug

Here's the trivial bug: Chrome Browser -> Options -> Personal Stuff -> Passwords and Autofill features should not be available per browser. 

Those personal stuff features put users at risk in multiuser computer situations such as public cafes, classrooms, and libraries.

Google's Advanced Search: Trivial Bug

When you run a Google Web search, Google's algorithms try to look for your search keywords in several places including Web page titles, text, and URLs.

If you want, you can use Google's Advanced Search filters to narrow down your search to specific areas.

This trivial to small-sized bug occurs when you try to search only in Web page body text: Advanced Search Page -> Where your keywords show up -> In the text of the page.

The problem is the Web body text searches incorrectly use the search operator as a literal search keyword instead of as an operator. You can easily see the bug if you try any of these searches:

[allinbody: house]
[allinbody: car]
[allinbody: tea]
[allinbody: football] 
[allinbody: algorithm]
[allinbody: science]

Choosing A Google User Name: Another Trivial Bug

Try to create a Google account with, for example, a user name "alicesmith" and also a second Google account with a user name "alice.smith".

After you create the "alicesmith" account, if you try to create an "alice.smith" account Google displays a message: "alice.smith is not available."

The Google error message is a trivial bug because it can lead you to incorrectly conclude a third-party already has created the "alice.smith" account.

In fact, the "alicesmith" account owns the "alice.smith" account. Google ignores nonconsecutive dots in a user name, and should probably specify that detail on its "Create An Account" form.

Google's Recipes Feature: Some Trivial Bugs

Google has a "recipes" search feature described here:

http://www.google.com/landing/recipes

"Search for a recipe or ingredient (ex: chili, banana bread, lentils). After searching for a recipe or ingredient on Google, select Recipes in the left-hand panel on the search results page. You can filter your results by ingredients, cook time, or calories."

The Google "recipes" feature has several trivial bugs:

Bug #1:

Ordinary searches are better than searches using the "recipes" feature because they A) return a greater number of recipe results, and B) allow you to add contextual keywords to make your searches more precise.

Finding recipes using a standard Google query might require an additional mouse click or two to drill down to the recipes, but the tradeoff of gaining more relevant recipes makes it worth while. 

Example #1:

Using the recipes feature

[apple pie]

About 4,630,000 results

Regular Google search

[recipes apple pie]

About 9,760,000 results

Example #2:

Using the recipes feature

[pizza]

About 35,900,000 results

Regular Google search

[recipes pizza]

About 106,000,000 results

Example #3:

Using the recipes feature

[tapas madrid hot spicy inexpensive]

About 1 result

Regular Google search

[recipes tapas madrid hot spicy inexpensive]

About 259,000 results

Example #4:

Using the recipes feature

[smirnoff cranberry twist]

About 1 result

Regular Google search

[recipes smirnoff cranberry twist]

About 147,000 results

Example #5:

Using the recipes feature

[tomato sauce mozzarella olive oil garlic basil oregano fennel pepper]

About 2 results

Regular Google search

[recipes tomato sauce mozzarella olive oil garlic basil oregano fennel pepper]

About 394,000 results

Example #6:

Using the recipes feature

[spanish olive crusted salmon]

About 4 results

Regular Google search

[recipes spanish olive crusted salmon]

About 219,000 results

Bug #2:

When you use the "recipes" feature, a list of ingredients displays with yes/no option buttons. The first part of the bug is that it is not clear what result you get if you do not select either yes or no for an ingredient. Maybe the ingredient will be included in the recipe and perhaps it won't?

However, the main part of bug #2 is that the set of ingredients you can include/exclude is limited and in many instances arbitrary.

When using the "recipes" feature, if you want a list of salad recipes to contain cucumbers, broccoli, and gorgonzola cheese and exclude jalapeno peppers you are out of luck. However, you could run a query for those recipes using a traditional Google search.

Here are the severely limited forced choice inventories of ingredients you can include/exclude from a recipes feature search for [salad] and for [omelette] :

Example #1:

Using the recipes feature search for [salad]:

Ingredients:

spinach yes/no

chicken yes/no

poppy seeds yes/no

dill yes/no

cranberries yes/no

sesame seeds yes/no

mustard yes/no

Example #2:

Using the recipes feature search for [omelette].

Ingredients:

haddock yes/no

watercress yes/no

crème fraîche yes/no

tarragon yes/no

feta yes/no

peppercorns yes/no

cheddar cheese yes/no

chives yes/no

See my earlier post about recipes: http://googcomments.blogspot.com/2008/02/smirnoff-cranberry-twist.html

A Small Google Search Bug

When you use the + prefix with Google search keywords, Google matches exact literal strings and does not return synonyms. If you search for spaghetti you can get a result for pasta, but if you search for +spaghetti you will only get spaghetti.

Should a Google search using the + prefix return more, fewer, or the same number of results as a search without the + prefix?

Here are a couple of possibilities:

1. The + prefix should return fewer results than the same query without the + operator: The + operator does not return synonyms, so if you search for keywords and their synonyms you should find a greater number of results pages.

2. The + prefix should return more results than the same query without the + operator: If searching for keywords and their synonyms requires more computational power than matching exact literal strings and if Google searches have time-out durations the +prefix keyword searches will return more results for any given amount of computational time.

The small bug is the discrepancy between these results:

1. Single keyword queries: + prefix returns fewer results.

2. Two keyword queries: + prefix returns more results.

Either the number of results feature is incompletely documented, making the metrics somewhat useless, or there's an algorithmic bug.

The examples below use arbitrary search keywords. In almost all cases, the + prefix returns fewer results for single keyword searches, but more results for two keyword searches.

Example #1:

pizza
About 556,000,000 results

+pizza
About 534,000,000 results

bicycle
About 212,000,000 results

+bicycle
About 204,000,000 results

pizza bicycle
About 17,200,000 results

+pizza +bicycle
About 53,100,000 results

pizza OR bicycle
About 727,000,000 results

+pizza OR +bicycle
About 1,440,000,000 results

Example #2:

coffee
About 939,000,000 results

+coffee
About 903,000,000 results

tea
About 756,000,000 results

+tea
About 729,000,000 results

coffee tea
About 75,900,000 results

+coffee +tea
About 120,000,000 results

coffee OR tea
About 1,630,000,000 results

+coffee OR +tea
About 3,160,000,000 results

Example #3:

ant
About 276,000,000 results

+ant
About 269,000,000 results

caterpillar
About 102,000,000 results

+caterpillar
About 99,300,000 results

ant caterpillar
About 6,350,000 results

+ant +caterpillar
About 16,700,000 results

ant OR caterpillar
About 365,000,000 results

+ant OR +caterpillar
About 731,000,000 results

Example #4:

baseball
About 621,000,000 results

+baseball
About 575,000,000 results

football
About 1,400,000,000 results

+football
About 1,290,000,000 results

baseball football
About 321,000,000 results

+baseball +football
About 325,000,000 results

baseball OR football
About 1,860,000,000 results

+baseball OR +football
About 3,610,000,000 results

Example #5:

crayon
About 38,000,000 results

+crayon
About 37,200,000 results

pencil
About 167,000,000 results

+pencil
bout 163,000,000 results

crayon pencil
About 8,260,000 results

+crayon +pencil
About 8,480,000 results

crayon OR pencil
About 399,000,000 results

+crayon OR +pencil
About 398,000,000 results

A Trivial GMail Bug

The bug is that GMail partially uses your customized incoming text filters when you send GMail.

Try this experiment: Create a GMail filter that deletes all incoming emails that contain the word "cat". Now send an email that contains the word "cat".

GMail sends your email, but it also moves a copy of it to your trash folder instead of to your sent email folder.