Problem in searching for words, pictures on the web
Susan Welsh United States Local time: 08:51 Member (2008) German to English + ...
Mar 8, 2010
Does anybody know a way to "tell" Google or another search engine to ignore search results that cannot be accessed without a paid subscription?
In other words, if I do a search for a scientific term, using Google Scholar, many, if not most, of my results will be in scientific journals that you have to pay for, either by subscription or a one-time payment for a PDF download. That's without even knowing whether the article will help me in my translation problem. Can't do it.
I know about searching for allintext and such commands, but they don't solve this problem.
A somewhat similar problem:
Is there a way to search for Google Images (or in another search engine) that will ONLY give you pictures of what you asked for? For example, if you search for a picture of "Einstein," you will come up with everything from pink elephants to porn sites. As far as I can tell, the way it works is if the WORD "Einstein" appears anywhere on the webpage, Google considers it a "hit." This is extremely aggravating and time-wasting. I should think they would have figured out a way to do it better by now. Maybe they have, but I can't find it on their various tutorial screens.
Thanks for any help offered!
Susan
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Αlban SHPΑTΑ Albania Partial member (2008) English to Albanian + ...
A few simple hints
Mar 8, 2010
I don't know if you already know this, but try using quotation marks to include a term that you want Google to find as is. F.ex. enter: "Albert Einstein" instead of just Albert Einstein. This will boost your results as Google will show only those results where Albert Einstein is used together. Also, if you want Google to discard results that include a certain word or group of words that you do not want to appear in the results, just write those words and add a minus in front of each. Try playing a bit with the settings in Google, you may find useful options there.
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Susan Welsh United States Local time: 08:51 Member (2008) German to English + ...
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@Alban
Mar 8, 2010
Thanks, I do know those tips. The problem is not that you get the wrong "Einstein," but that "Albert Einstein" is mentioned somewhere on the page that also has a picture of pink flamingos, bathing beauties, or whatever. And unfortunately, there seems to be no way to tell Google to "put a minus sign in front of everything that is not a picture of `Einstein' "!
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Isabelle Derson Belgium Local time: 14:51 Member (2009) English to French + ...
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Carla Catolino Italy Local time: 14:51 Member (2008) Italian to English + ...
Agree with Isabelle
Mar 8, 2010
I was going to suggest what Isabelle told you. There is also a button on the google main page called images. When I am looking for an immage to reference I simply type in the word and click images.
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Susan Welsh United States Local time: 08:51 Member (2008) German to English + ...
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Google Images
Mar 8, 2010
Isabelle and Carla, thanks, but that's what I was already doing. What I tried to describe is how that does not work very well.
Yes, you get pictures of what you are looking for (usually), but you also get all sorts of flotsam and jetsam that you DON'T want. My problem is how to focus the search better. I waste hours every week with this stuff. (Perhaps it's "off topic," since not all translators have to deal with this problem.)
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Bumin Turkey Local time: 15:51 English to Turkish + ...
not exactly but
Mar 9, 2010
I understand you well, there is not an exact answer of your question. At least for now.
I think you also know about advanced search, but a line may be helpful:
===
In Google advanced search, you can enter, for instance:
* Search "Albert Einstein"
* But don't show pages that have... any of these unwanted words:
porn beer apple lovely bicycle
* Filetype:pdf
* Usage rights: Free to use or share
* Safesearch: On (safer way for porn content)
===
Absolutely this will focus the results better.
Hope that I have been of some help.
--- Two rare tips, copy&paste
Define:
If you need to quickly look up the definition of a word or phrase, simply use the "define:" command.
Example: define:thistledown
Numeric Ranges:
This is a rarely used, but highly useful tip. Let’s say you want to find results that contain any of a range of numbers. You can do this by using the X..Y modifier (in case this is hard to read, what’s between the X and Y are two periods. This type of search is useful for years (as shown below), prices or anywhere where you want to provide a series of numbers.
Example: president 1940..1950
---
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Isabelle Derson Belgium Local time: 14:51 Member (2009) English to French + ...
that's the problem...
Mar 9, 2010
that's the problem of Google, you find things you did'nt look for
Give us a more specific example
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 14:51 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
@Susan
Mar 9, 2010
Susan Welsh wrote:
Does anybody know a way to "tell" Google or another search engine to ignore search results that cannot be accessed without a paid subscription?
I know of no such tool. What might be nice (but someone has to write it) is a tool that opens the first 10 hits on a Google search automatically and then checks if the search term occurs on it, and if not, close those pages.
Or... is it the fact that you are wasting bandwidth (and time) that bothers you? Because you can always surf with images and flash disabled, which will make loading faster.
Oh, and do you open Google results in new tabs?
Is there a way to search for Google Images (or in another search engine) that will ONLY give you pictures of what you asked for?
No. That is because Google can't access the meta data on image files. So Google has to make educated guesses about an image, based on the surrounding text. I find that for most image searches the first two or three pages have useful hits, but after that it gets hazy.
As far as I can tell, the way it works is if the WORD "Einstein" appears anywhere on the webpage, Google considers it a "hit."
You're probably using hyperbole here, but if not, then my answer is that Google is a bit cleverer than that. It also takes into account the image name, the ALT text, the TITLE text, and the surrounding text.
Another question: do you use Google's advanced image search, whereby you can specify that you only want pictures of, say, people?
Another question: do you use a browser that allows you to switch tabs using a simple keyboard shortcut, and to close unwanted tabs using a simple keyboard shortcut?
[Edited at 2010-03-09 08:13 GMT]
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Susan Welsh United States Local time: 08:51 Member (2008) German to English + ...
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@All
Mar 9, 2010
Thanks for the answers, even though some of them tell me that what I wish could be done can't be done!
First, re images, let me report another example, which is something I needed to find recently: a non-copyrighted photo of the decommissioned Kalkar fast-breeder reactor in Germany.
Searching for: +kalkar +"fast breeder" on Google Images, specifying "photo" content,
I get, on the first page:
11 pix of the breeder itself
the Kalkar Town Hall
Mascura fast breeder in France
a fast breeder in Beijing
the EBRI-I reactor in the U.S.
the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan
a low-speed car called the Xebra
a field covered by solar panels
second page:
some Kalkar pictures, plus:
Angela Merkel shaking hands with some people
Easter Island statues in a row, with the tag "mysticism and cargo-cultism"
a picture of a guy in front of a beautiful body of water, with the tag "About Me"
a bunch of flooded houses
an old house in Germany, possibly in the town of Kalkar
A drawing (not photo) of the EPR-III reactor plan in France
[added later: I tried the same search but without "photo content," and a couple of gems were added, including a locator map of India from Wikipedia. Go figure.]
Samuel Murray wrote:
Or... is it the fact that you are wasting bandwidth (and time) that bothers you?
No, that's not a problem. The time waste is in looking at pictures that MAY be what I'm looking for, but turn out not to be. (For example, yesterday I searched for a photo of Bernard de Mandeville, and came up with pictures of Adam Smith. Only when you root around in the file do you discover that it's the wrong guy, if you don't already know.) So, you have to dive into each file and poke around (indeed, some of them open slowly on my computer, but usually not). Or they are under copyright so I can't use them (but that's another issue, and Bumin's suggestion on using Advanced Search to specify that should be helpful).
Samuel Murray wrote:
Susan Welsh wrote:
As far as I can tell, the way it works is if the WORD "Einstein" appears anywhere on the webpage, Google considers it a "hit."
You're probably using hyperbole here, but if not, then my answer is that Google is a bit cleverer than that. It also takes into account the image name, the ALT text, the TITLE text, and the surrounding text.
Actually, I wasn't using hyperbole--that's how I had concluded it worked, based on results such as those I listed above. But now I've learned something.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Do you use Google's advanced image search, whereby you can specify that you only want pictures of, say, people?
Yes, but unfortunately, to take your specific example, it doesn't allow you to choose "people" but only "faces." I would most often be interested in pictures of people doing things, not head shots, so I almost never use this. But I admit that I don't use the Advanced Search functions as often as I should, so that's a good reminder.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Do you use a browser that allows you to switch tabs using a simple keyboard shortcut, and to close unwanted tabs using a simple keyboard shortcut?
I'm not sure. Sometimes a new window/tab opens, sometimes not. I use Mozilla. The only shortcut I know is Ctrl+T to open a new tab, but it doesn't seem to do it automatically, at least not all the time.
@Buran
I have lately been using the define:blahblah command, but rarely does it help very much. I am usually looking for a word in my source languages, German and Russian. Maybe the English word "define" doesn't match up with non-English word definitions, I'm not sure. (Would Google "know" what is a definition in, say, Tamil?)
Thanks again,
Susan
[Edited at 2010-03-09 13:30 GMT]
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