Re: google search result differ in Opera and w3m

[Xah]

On Aug 17, 2:41 pm, Thorsten Bonow <thorsten.bo...@post.rwth-
aachen.de> wrote:
> >>>>> "Xah" ==Xah <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>    Xah> Anyone reproduce? I'm suspecting this is w3m bug or the w3m-mode bug?
>     >>
>     >> You can reproduce the two different results if you call your browser 
> with
>     >> or without the quotes `"' surrounding your query expression, which are
>     >> translated to `%22' at the beginning and end of the string sent to the
>     >> browser.
>     >>
>     >> So I think you call emacs/w3m with and firefox without them.
>
>    Xah> This is kinda odd. The double straight quote needs to be part of the
>    Xah> search.
>
>    Xah> In OSX 10.4.11, in Safari, Opera, Firefox (all latest public version),
>    Xah> they all return mulitple results with the following line on top:
>
>    Xah> «Information No results found for "The computer wizards at Industrial
>    Xah> Light and Magic help alchemize".
>
>    Xah> Results for The computer wizards at Industrial Light and Magic help
>    Xah> alchemize (without quotes):»
>
>    Xah> in w3m and icab, they give just 1 result.
>
>    Xah> So, perhaps somehow when google search automatically switch to a non-
>    Xah> exact-phrase search when the exact-phrase search got only one result?
>    Xah> But this couldn't be because some FF in linux apparantly return just 1
>    Xah> result from exact phrase search too.
>
> Hi,
>
> I can't reproduce your problem.
>
> If I type your query with quotes (`"The computer wizards at Industrial Light 
> and
> Magic help alchemize"'), I get one result (as expected) in epiphany, firefox 
> and
> emacs/w3m and w3m. If I type it without quotes (`The computer wizards at
> Industrial Light and Magic help alchemize'), I get many results---nothing
> unexpected here.
>
> If I paste your URL
> (`http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer%20wizards%20at%20Ind...)
> in a browser or call the browser with your URL as argument from the command
> line, again I get one result---with all my browsers.
>
> If I remove the quotes, translated to `%22', at the beginning and end of the
> search phrase
> (`http://www.google.com/search?q=The%20computer%20wizards%20at%20Indust...),
> I get many results---again as expected.
>
> I can't reproduce your claim that with the *same* string you can get different
> results from google depending on the browser.
>
> Are you calling the browsers from a script and add quoting in one case but not
> the other? Am I missing something?

Am not sure what's going on myself.

Apparently, in my system, OSX 10.4.11 and latest public versions of
Safari, FireFox, Opera, all automatically returns the multiple results
that came from non-exact phrase search. This is done by pasting the
line

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer%20wizards%20at%20Industrial%20Light%20and%20Magic%20help%20alchemize%22

as it is into the browsers url field.

Alternatively, the same behavior can result by running these commands
in the Terminal:

open -a opera "http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer
%20wizards%20at%20Industrial%20Light%20and%20Magic%20help%20alchemize
%22"

open -a safari "http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer
%20wizards%20at%20Industrial%20Light%20and%20Magic%20help%20alchemize
%22"

open -a firefox "http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer
%20wizards%20at%20Industrial%20Light%20and%20Magic%20help%20alchemize
%22"

while in w3m itself (without using emacs interface), and in iCab, the
single result of exact phrase search is returned.

w3m behavior can be produced on my machine by running these in
Terminal:

w3m 
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer%20wizards%20at%20Industrial%20Light%20and%20Magic%20help%20alchemize%22

w3m "http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20computer%20wizards%20at
%20Industrial%20Light%20and%20Magic%20help%20alchemize%22"

----------------

From your post, and other's reply i've asked in irc, it appears that
in linux, the single result is seen in Opera and Firefox. So far i
don't have confirmation of reproducablility in OSX 10.4.11, or on
Windows.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄