Julian Raymar
Assignment 1
CS 485-101
No. Query Terms GOOGLE BING
1 2,510 2,740
2 21,880 166
3 21,920 5,520
4 23,290 7,400
5 21,880 164
6 2,660 3,230
7 25,270 12,400
8 739 83
9 25,270 1,390
10 2,280 1,570
11 2,280 0
12 20,590 0
13 0 0
14 to be or not to be 1,250 3,180
15 TO BE OR NOT TO BE 22,520 161
16 to be OR not to be 22,520 91
17 (a AND b) OR (-a OR –b) 25,270 6,420
Q2.1
Yes, capitalizing the word “or” in both Bing and Google matters.
This is because for both search engines, the word “OR” is an
operator, not a search term. It returns the results of either of
the terms surrounding the OR operator.
Q2.2
It depends. For a Google search, capitalizing the terms did not
make a difference. For Bing, it did.
Q2.3
Logically, queries 2 and 5 are equivalent because the presence
of parentheses does not change the order in which the
operations are performed.
Indeed this seems to be the case, queries 2 and 5 returned
exactly the same number of results when Google was used.
Bing’s results differed only by 2 million.
Q2.4
Both search engines use uppercase “OR” as the logical OR
operator, or Union. Neither Google nor Bing, uses lowercase
“or” for this purpose.
Q2.5
Google treats the terms terms “NOT” and “not” as regular
search terms, not operators. Bing, on the other hand, does use
uppercase “NOT” as an exclusion operator. Bing does not treat
the term “not” as an operator.
Q2.6
Return all pages that include the term “a” and all pages that
exclude the term “a”. In theory, this query should return
nothing, which it did.
Q2.7
Google: 2,3,4,5,7, 9
Bing: 1,3,4 and 9,10
Combined: 13
Q2.8
There does not seem to be any specific trend other than that
Google usually returns at least twice as many pages as Bing.
Q3.1
In all cases but the first and sixth query, Google returned the
higher number of results.
Q3.2
Google: Greatest result was 25,270 million, which would be my
guess for the total number of pages indexed.
Bing: Greatest result was 12,400 million, which would be my
guess for the total number of pages indexed.
Q3.3
It seems the searches and are disallowed, so
attempts to force Google to return it’s universe of pages are
accounted for. I attempted to search but still
could only reach 25,270 million.
Q3.4
I could get results greater than 12,400 million.
Q3.5
My guess would stay the same as the guess in Q3.3. There are
25,270 million indexed pages for Google, and 12,400 million
for Bing.
Q3.6
Google: The result for queries 14 vs. 15 and 16 differ because
they are different queries. In query 14, “or” is not treated as an
operator because it is lowercase, whereas in queries 15 and 16
“OR” is treated as an operator. It returns the results of either
[to be] or [not to be] in query 15 and the results of [TO BE] or
[NOT TO BE] in query 16.
Bing: The results for all three queries differ because they are
all different queries. In the first query, none of the terms are
operators. In query two, “OR” and “NOT” are operators. In
query three, only “OR” is an operator.
Q3.7
Google: Either the pages that contain “a” and “AND” and “b” or
the pages that do not contain a or do not contain b
(“a” AND “AND” AND “b”) OR (NOT “a” OR NOT “b”)
Bing: Either the pages that contain “a” and “b” or the pages that
do not contain “a” or do not contain “b”
(“a” AND “b”) OR (NOT “a” OR NOT “b”)