Regular Expression (or Literal) Search Engine

[Jüš† ä gü¥]

Does anybody know of a true regular expression search engine or else a search engine which is truly literal with things in quotes?

My problem with search engines such as google are that they do NOT take 100% literally anything which you put in quotes. Basically, it is the same as if I did not even have the quotes, and that is worthless to me. Also, they omit "common words". What if I am NOT an idiot and PURPOSELY want to search on those words? (especially when combined in a quoted string which I want to LITERALLY be found as such, with NO words in between any of the words in the quotes!)

My gosh WWW search engines suck so bad, and that is why! They are NOT literal ENOUGH!

Plus, it would help if someone implemented a search engine which filtered out advertising/company type sites from informational/educational type sites from entertainment type sites.

[dunbar]

Googling for "exactly this string" does not work?

[Jüš† ä gü¥]

Originally posted by dunbar
Googling for "exactly this string" does not work?

Correct!

If you have any words which are defined by google to be "common words", those are left out of the search. "Common words" are usually words such as "this, the, a, an, of", etc.... The problem is if you actually want those EXACT words in that EXACT order.

For example, suppose, hypothetically, there were two books. One named "Crossing A River" and the other named "Crossing The River". Suppose there are a very ridiculously large number of fansites dedicated to "Crossing The River", but you want to find a fansite for "Crossing A River". Well, put "Crossing A River" into your search engine, search for it, and you will be bombarded by all of the websites for "Crossing The River", for example.

Depending on what you want to search for, it can be really annoying.

Also, the quoting thing only makes sure that each word appears somewhat in that order (though not literally so), and there can be words in between them. For example, a search for "Crossing The River" might turn up a page where the "match" on that page is "Crossing The Wide River" when that is NOT what you want.

Does that make sense???

[Siliconjunkie]

I think the problem is with indexing common words. It would be enourmous if you had to index them all.

[mpc]

Use "Advanced" searching.

[Lychgate]

...You do realise if you put what you are searching for inside speech marks that it'll search the exact quote, right?

[JPMiller]

Try Teoma

[SpookyEddy]

If you have any words which are defined by google to be "common words", those are left out of the search.

Not true if you use a string bound by double quotes. For example "linux rocks world" returns no results yet "linux rocks the world" (the being a fairly common word) returns 2 results. "linux the rocks world" also returns nothing so the point about order is also mute. IMO you are unlikely to get much better than that on a sytem that indexes so much content, however it would be nice to be proved wrong.

Regards

ed