Excellent Google flag

[richardm]

With it being Christmas, I've been doing a lot of mooching around the internet for shopping.

I've been increasingly annoyed by the number of sites that don't actually offer the product I'm looking for, but collate lists of websites who might stock what I'm after.

You end up with lots of "Find the best price for Shelving* at Epinions!" sites - not what I'm after.

Courtesy of a BBC report on the way Google has rejigged its engine, I have now discovered a way to get rid of much of the waffly sites - the "-waffle" flag.

Entering "Shelving -waffle" into the search box gets you much more directly relevant sites. It's really handy, and beats me why it isn't on permanently.

*I'm not actually buying shelving for Christmas. That would probably be a divorcing matter.

 

[El Greco]

You know Froogle ?

 

[xouper]

richardm: Courtesy of a BBC report on the way Google has rejigged its engine, I have now discovered a way to get rid of much of the waffly sites - the "-waffle" flag.

Apparently I forgot to bring my brane with me today, can you tell me where this is documented?

 

[richardm]

Re: Re: Excellent Google flag

Apparently I forgot to bring my brane with me today, can you tell me where this is documented?

Afraid not. I read about it in an article about one of Google's algorithm changes. It had bumped a number of businesses off the front page and they were whinging about it. One of the reasons was that pages were deliberately setting themselves up to attract extra hits.

The journalist suggested "-waffle" as a flag to try to reduce the number of dubious search results.

Edited to add: This appears to be the article the article plagiarised It's quite an interesting read, actually:

WebMasterWorld members came up with an interesting observation which we confirmed. Only certain phrases were being selected for processing through the new algo. Indeed it was asserted that this could be proven by amending the search by asking to exclude a spurious string (such as -waffle) and it was true! If you do the search shelving -waffle in the UK, all the sites that used to previously be listed in the top positions suddenly re-appeared. Similarly, do that search on the main Google with the same search and all the shopping portals disappear and shelving suppliers re-appear! If you do the same thing with the phrase "jackets" there is no real difference between the results previously shown. Why?

After tests on over 500 phrases we have concluded that certain phrases kick in the new algo, and certain don't. The ones that do are always highly commercial and the ones that are not, are often also commercial. So why some and not others? Completely non-commercial phrases never come up with any indication that the new algo/filter is being applied.

If you try this yourself and your phrase is more than 2 words you may have to add additional garbage words so web design Toronto may need to be web design Toronto -waffle -woggle.

These are the facts, though, it must be said that it is unlikely for Google to continue allowing this particular loop-hole in to viewing the different results, if they apply, for very long - so you may not continue to see the differences in a few days. If you don't, they were there!

So - not actually a new flag after all, it seems, just an interesting quirk.

 

[El Greco]

Apparently it's not working (anymore ?)

 

[richardm]

It still seems to work for the given example. Which is excellent if you want to read about shelves

 

[RichardR]

It still seems to work for the given example. Which is excellent if you want to read about shelves

For me the searches are virtually identical.

 

[xouper]

richardm: The journalist suggested "-waffle" as a flag to try to reduce the number of dubious search results. ... So - not actually a new flag after all, it seems, just an interesting quirk.

What puzzles me is that -flag is not the syntax used by google for its flags. They use flag:value for flags that modify the search. Putting a minus sign in front of a word is the syntax for excluding a word from the search results. Which is why this stuff about some "waffle flag" still doesn't make any sense to me. But then again, maybe I left my brane at home again.

 

[zakur]

What puzzles me is that -flag is not the syntax used by google for its flags. They use flag:value for flags that modify the search. Putting a minus sign in front of a word is the syntax for excluding a word from the search results. Which is why this stuff about some "waffle flag" still doesn't make any sense to me. But then again, maybe I left my brane at home again.

Indeed, "flag" in this case is a misnomer. A better term for this trick would have been "spurious string exclusion." From the article linked above:

Only certain phrases were being selected for processing through the new algo. Indeed it was asserted that this could be proven by amending the search by asking to exclude a spurious string (such as -waffle) and it was true!

You could have used any bumber of spurious words, not just 'waffle.' The authors also mentioned using 'woggle.'

Regardless, the trick does not appear to work well anymore, just as the authors foresaw:

These are the facts, though, it must be said that it is unlikely for Google to continue allowing this particular loop-hole in to viewing the different results, if they apply, for very long - so you may not continue to see the differences in a few days. If you don't, they were there!