Re: More effective searching

From	"Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Re: More effective searching
Date	2025-06-30 14:10 +0200
Message-ID	<L3luF-eep7-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	<L0O09-cA8a-7@gated-at.bofh.it> <L0Q1X-cBBL-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <L1aWJ-cOIC-3@gated-at.bofh.it> <L3kIh-edQH-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	FUB-IT, Freie Universität Berlin

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Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> writes:

> On Tue, 2025-06-24 at 07:27 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> Side Issue -- Google and DuckDuckGo seem more interested in quantity 
>> rather than quality. Any pointers to search engine with friendly
>> Boolean search? TIA
>
> "You" "can" "try" "putting" "double" "quotes" "around" "every" "word"
> AND "word group" OR -use -dashes -to -exclude
>
> https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/20-tips-use-google-search-efficiently.html
> https://www.lifewire.com/bing-advanced-search-3482817
>
> ... might also be useful (DDG is based on Bing)

In the past with DDG '-' excluded and '+' included, but now that is no
the case.  Rather, to quote from

  https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax

the meaning is the following:

  cats -dogs	Fewer dogs in results
  cats +dogs	More dogs in results

Just after this change was made several years ago, I found that in some
cases, adding 

  '-foo'

actually lead to more results containing 'foo' than when 'foo' was
omitted completely, presumably because less 'foo' is potentially still
more than no 'foo'.  I did complain to DDG at the time and I have the
impression that the issues has now been fixed.

Cheers,

Loris

-- 
This signature is currently under constuction.

Thread

Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-23 14:00 +0200
  Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2025-06-23 14:20 +0200
    Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? John Dow <johnmdow@me.com> - 2025-06-23 14:40 +0200
    Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-23 16:00 +0200
      Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2025-06-23 16:30 +0200
        Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-24 14:20 +0200
          Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2025-06-24 15:10 +0200
    Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Timothy M Butterworth <timothy.m.butterworth@gmail.com> - 2025-06-25 12:20 +0200
  Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Hans <hans.ullrich@mail.de> - 2025-06-23 16:10 +0200
    Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-24 14:30 +0200
      Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-25 16:20 +0200
        Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2025-06-25 16:40 +0200
      More effective searching (was: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB  device - available?) Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> - 2025-06-30 13:20 +0200
        Re: More effective searching "Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de> - 2025-06-30 14:10 +0200
          Re: More effective searching Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-30 16:10 +0200
        Re: More effective searching Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-30 16:00 +0200
  Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Van Snyder <van.snyder@sbcglobal.net> - 2025-06-24 03:00 +0200
    Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? 🦓 <czyborra@gmail.com> - 2025-06-24 06:30 +0200
    Re: Linux friendly FM tuner on USB device - available? Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-24 13:00 +0200

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