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Googling quirks

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Thadeus

Technical User
Jan 16, 2002
1,548
US
I just remembered a funny result that Google gave me once when I was looking for a friend's last name.

Her last name was Schneck. (It has changed since)

So I enter Schneck into Google and it returns with:
Did you mean: cohen?

Which was funny because it was the last name of the third person in our little cadre of friends. And unexpected because there appears no obvious connection between schneck and cohen.

Has anyone else had Google return with a humorous or surprising "Did you mean: ????"

~Thadeus
[sub]p.s. This does not happen anymore with Schneck... Google's always tweaking the way they perform searches and the indexing that originally caused this must have been "tweaked".[/sub]
 
Doesn't work with my last name (Dryden). I used Ask Jeeves and in addition to the poet John Dryden, there's also the (NASA) Dryden Flight Research Center and towns named Dryden in Ontario Canada, Nevada and New York (and I know there's one in Texas), Ken Dryden and Dryden Press. And that's just the first page of hits.

Last time I googled my full name I got a lot of hits from Tek-Tips postings too.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard. [dragon]
 
I once had Google return the exact same spelling of an item I had selected from the drop down (recently visited) list. I don't recall the exact example, but I thought it was funny.

Search for: Smith

Did you mean: Smith?

Tim

[blue]__________________________________________________
If you need immediate assistance, please raise your hand.
[/blue]
 
Why would I want to query my name with a question mark? ;-)
 
A bit off topic, but this reminds me of some of the great 'corrections' MS Office will offer up. Have you ever typed 'helpdesk' into word and then looked to see what spellcheck thought you meant?

[tt]_____
-John
[/tt]Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.
 

anotherhiggins,

Mine (with grammar check on) just offers to capitalize it, as just about any word I would type just like that in the beginning of the line. What does yours suggest?
 
Hrmph. It's just like MS to go and fix a perfectly amusing little thing. Wait, no it isn't.

Anyway, this worked on some previous version of Word that I used to have, and it still works on my company's GroupWise spell check:
Helpdesk is marked as being misspelled. The only offered correction: helpless.

[tt]_____
-John
[/tt]Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.
 
Onyxpurr said:
Why would I want to query my name with a question mark?

It's called the Witness Protection Program!
bigsmile.gif


Tim

[blue]_____________________________________________________
If you need immediate assistance, please raise your hand.
If you are outside of Raleigh, raise your hand and say
[/blue] [red]Ooh! Ooh![/red]
 
Nope, I never removed 'helpdesk' from the dictionary - Word just didn't recognize it as a word. I think I first heard about it years ago in an email I received while I was working at a helpdesk. I tried it at the time and it worked as described - Word just didn't know 'helpdesk' was a word. It was probably Word 97 or maybe even an earlier version. I guess I just haven't tried it in a long time, as Word 2000 at work and Word XP at home both have 'helpdesk' in their dictionaries.

I just ran spell check in Groupwise and in Lotus Notes - neither knows 'helpdesk' and both offer up 'helpless' in its place.

[tt]_____
-John
[/tt]Help us help you. Please read FAQ181-2886 before posting.
 
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