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Google Even Pays Attention to Stop (Noise) Words

Interestingly, Google [UI consultant what is a] produces different results than [Google UI consultant what is it] , even though “it” and “a” are usually stop words:

Words that are commonly used, like ‘the,’ ‘a,’ and ‘for,’ are usually ignored (these are called stop words). But there are even exceptions to this exception. The search [ the who ] likely refers to the band; the query [ who ] probably refers to the World Health Organization — Google will not ignore the word ‘the’ in the first query.

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I believe this is more advanced behavior than most search engines currently exhibit. Certainly when I was at LexisNexis there was no way on God’s green Earth that we were going to get the search engine folks to change the way the engine treated stop words.

“God’s green Earth” – origin of phrase

God’s green Earth: the origin of the phrase appears to be a sacred poem, “The Spirit of The Seasons,” by the Reverend W. M. Hetherington, available on Google Book Search. It begins:

Он ! beautiful is God’s green earth I

When in the gentle Spring 
Its flowery beauties leap to birth, 

And wild-wood echoes ring. 
Instructive with melodious joy, 
Glad Nature’s anthem pure and high, 
To Him whose goodness gave them birth :— 
Oh ! beautiful ia God’s green earth!

 

I’d like to see one of today’s pastors knock out something like this!

In the original, “earth” is lower-cased, but modern style is to capitalize “Earth.”