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1MM: Double Quotes and Negative Transfer

Dan Russell • May 22, 2020
 SearchReSearch
Republished with permission from SearchReSearch
1MM: Double Quotes and Negative Transfer Dan Russell

I had trouble using double quotes in my search...

... or, more precisely, it was when I switched OUT of Google to another search application that caused the problems.

I'd searched for a particular lyric (one I've used before) "When Venus the goddess of beauty and love." In Google, this works perfectly--I can find the music easily.

But then, once I'd switched back to my laptop I used Apple's Spotlight search utility to find a copy of the song lyrics that I knew I had on my hard drive somewhere.

I tried and tried.. and failed. Trust me, I'm 100% sure I've got a copy--the question is Why can't I find them?

I thought that perhaps the index for the Spotlight system was broken, but no--after a few moments I figured out that it was user error. I'd been entering the same query complete with the quote marks:

[ "when Venus the goddess of beauty and love" ]

And THAT wasn't working.

Luckily, I figured out quickly that Spotlight searches for whatever you enter, including the quote marks. So, to make it work, I had to NOT use the double quotes!

Fine.

It means that I have to know the particular details of each search / find engine I use! It's not an onerous burden, but you need to know, if you're going to use these tools well.

This impressed me so much that I made a short video about it... Here you go...



Hope you find this one useful!

Search on!


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About the Author

Dan RussellDan Russell

I study the way people search and research. I guess that makes me an anthropologist of search. While I work at Google, my blog and G+ posts reflects my own thoughts and not those of my employer. I am FIA's Future-ist in Residence. More »

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