Problems seraching newsgroups with Google groups..

[Michel S.]

FU2: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

Hello,

Some months ago, I noticed some changes in the newsgroups search
results provided by Google.

First, I found the number of hits very small compared to what I was
used to. Second, many of these hits are part of the same thread, which
was not the case before. Finally, a search for some of my own posts
made 2 years ago was unsuccessful.

This morning, I made a simple search ("Excel 2003", without quotes) and
got NO result - which is impossible since my newsreader shows many
posts with these words on the subject line in the last few days only !!

Here's the search url :
http://groups.google.ca/groups/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=excel+2003

My Google preferences are set to : french interface, search pages
written in french & english, no safe search filter, 50 results per
page. I tried to change these settings, but at no avail.

Anybody noticed the same problem ? Has an explanation ? A solution
or work around ?

Thanks.

PS: Sorry if this post seems out of topic, but I extensively use
google groups to search many microsoft.public groups for development
and support purposes - and I find very annoying to get fewer and fewer
relevant posts now than the number I got less than one year ago.

 

[Ron de Bruin]

Yes, there are problems the last months.
Google knows about the problems from what I have read in a Google group.

My Search add-in also use Google for newsgroups
http://www.rondebruin.nl/Google.htm

 

[Michel S.]

Thanks for you reply.

Do you know the group name this subject was discussed in ?

I know I could use Google groups to search for this, but since it is
precisely the subject.. ;-)

Michel


Ron de Bruin a écrit :

 

[Gerry]

Michel

Your excel search gives 11,000 results here. The language option has
never worked for me. Select English only and you still get other
languages. One of your results on the first page was Spanish.

Your name in the headers is Michel S. <[email protected]>

Searching on the author is (e-mail address removed) produces 15,300 results. No
doubt (e-mail address removed) has been used by many other users.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[John W. Vinson]

Anybody noticed the same problem ? Has an explanation ? A solution
or work around ?

Yes, unfortunately. Google Groups has become *very* erratic and unreliable.

I don't know of any good alternative.

John W. Vinson [MVP]

 

[James A. Fortune]

FU2: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

Hello,

Some months ago, I noticed some changes in the newsgroups search results
provided by Google.

First, I found the number of hits very small compared to what I was used
to. Second, many of these hits are part of the same thread, which was
not the case before. Finally, a search for some of my own posts made 2
years ago was unsuccessful.

This morning, I made a simple search ("Excel 2003", without quotes) and
got NO result - which is impossible since my newsreader shows many posts
with these words on the subject line in the last few days only !!

Here's the search url :
http://groups.google.ca/groups/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=excel+2003

My Google preferences are set to : french interface, search pages
written in french & english, no safe search filter, 50 results per
page. I tried to change these settings, but at no avail.

Anybody noticed the same problem ? Has an explanation ? A solution or
work around ?

I have noticed the same problem. My guess is that Google is using less
key words (a database?) to search older posts over time. I suspect that
there is not any kind of keyword refresh mechanism for posts that do not
contain a Reply link. My solution is to save my old posts and any
particularly promising posts as text files (N.B., don't put a bunch of
files in your root directory). I have saved over half of my posts to
CDMA and MPA to my hard drive so far. I should create a database that
gleans all the words from those posts and uses them to create records in
a search table. I also put the URL of the message or thread at the top
of the text file. Also, in a private email, Jeff Conrad recommended
Tony Toews' Newsgroup database as a useful way to help organize information:

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/newsgroupanswersmdb.htm

I hope Jeff won't mind me citing the following quote from that email:

"I have been using this for a very long time and it has been an
invaluable resource in keeping things organized for me. I began adding
links, code, article information, etc into this database a long time ago
and just continue to add to it each week. If I see an interesting tidbit
of code or a new twist on doing something I will copy all the text from
that newsgroup post and put into this database. I try and name each
entry with something that will help me find it later. For example, I
have quite a few entries dealing with Access Security so I always title
those entries with Security - ......... For any Switchboard Manager
Questions I title them Switchboard - .....

By doing it this way, all the common items stay close together in
alphabetical order. Make sense?"

James A. Fortune
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Michel S.]

Thanks for your reply,

Oddly enough, I get 11,000 results if I select "any language", and
71,600 if I select "english" only (and still none if I check both
english and french).

While one can get *some* results, it clearly doesn't work like it used
to do before and it is very annoying.

Selecting the 2 specific languages before gave only posts in these
languages, and having to browse thru a fewer total number of posts with
some in languages I don't understand (spanish, deutch, italian) or even
know about is very annoying.


As for my own posts, I searched for "Michel S." (with quotes), sorted
by date and there's a lot of posts I made which aren't returned in the
results; the latest returned which is really mine is dated march 20,
2007 and I posted at least 30 times since then..

Thanks again.


Après mûre réflexion, Gerry a écrit :

 

[Mike Fogleman]

That URL link shows over 11,000 hits for me. HMMM.

Mike F

 

[Michel S.]

Thanks for your reply, but :

1) Did you set your preferences to the same as mine ? As I replied
earlier, I also get 11,000 hits in setting the preferences to "all
languages", but it was not working like this before..

2) Do you find "normal" that there were only 11,000 threads containing
the words Excel and 2003 in "all languages" in the last 4 years ?

Michel

Mike Fogleman a formulé la demande :

 

[Daave]

FU2: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

Hello,

Some months ago, I noticed some changes in the newsgroups search
results provided by Google.

First, I found the number of hits very small compared to what I was
used to. Second, many of these hits are part of the same thread,
which was not the case before. Finally, a search for some of my own
posts made 2 years ago was unsuccessful.

This morning, I made a simple search ("Excel 2003", without quotes)
and got NO result - which is impossible since my newsreader shows many
posts with these words on the subject line in the last few days only
!!

Here's the search url :
http://groups.google.ca/groups/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=excel+2003

I found 17 results:

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=excel+2003&enc_author=0r05qg4AAAAHF1AlNRRWN2z3Q0udwuj8

 

[ilia]

I've found that many times google groups search indeces are out of
date by a few days. Often I cannot find posts that I'm interested in
that happened on any given day or even a few days before.