Google Confusion

[internic]

Ok, so here's something that I've wondered from time to time but have never come to a conclusion on, and the answer is probably very simple: How do you properly do the search of the form

(cat OR dog) AND (food OR bed)

on google? Obviously, you could type

cat OR dog AND food OR bed

but it's not clear whether google will interpret that as my

Comments

[saramwrap]

Nerd.

[honz69]

Well lets see here.....it uses standard Boolean Algebra. I'm not sure but, mathmatical rules of order of operation should work. (e.g. Parenthasis, Brackets, etc...) Here is a results page from a google search on Boolean Algebra:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=boolean+search&aq=2&oq=boolean

[internic]

You'd think that, but witness, for example, this page from the search results you linked to, which claims certain sorts of grouping is not possible (of course, that page is old). Also, try the following two searches:

(cat OR dog) AND (bed OR food)

cat OR (dog AND bed) OR food

Those two searches ought to yield very different results, but as far as I can tell they yield exactly the same first 100 results. The only thing that changes is the estimated total number of results, and since that's a round number it's obviously not exact anyway.

So, as far as I can tell from playing with it, it looks like OR takes precedence over AND (I think that's the opposite of the usual convention for boolean logic) and it appears to ignore parenthesis entirely.

[honz69]

Man, that's weird. Glad yall weathered the storm this time. Cheers....

Honz

P.S. Geeks R Us....... :D