Fun with Google's New Synonym Operator

Oops, looks like my linebreaks were lost:

w3c = xml
xml = data, tutorial
tutorial = reference, guide
guide = map, manual
map = travel
travel = tour(s), map

love = romantic, marriage, lovers, compatibility. One the second page is a chocolote site. Useful to someone searching for love?

This exposes synonyms but ends up excluding alternate forms of the keyword. For example, ~library -library yields archive and archives as synonyms, but doesn't give the full picture: It excludes librarian, librarians, etc.

Beck does not equal Jeff Beck -- Two different musicians.

Yeah, but the "beck" synonym for "loser" clearly refers to the younger, hipper Beck. Check out the results for the synonym search without the exclusion. I'm guessing that the "-beck" lowers Beck.com in the search results.

This new operator does not work very well in Spanish. I tried a lot of words, and none of them worked. But one: 'sexo' [sex].

http://www.google.com/search?q=-sexo+%7Esexo, and it returns 'mujeres' [women] and 'chicas' [girls].

Sorry, Andy--you're right. And you thought this method was idiot proof! :)

I posted a few more on my site: fieldmethods.net, although I haven't tried out this ~/- trick yet...

My favorites so far: Ayn Rand / Libertarian; Republican / Democrat (weird, that... but come to think of it... :) ).

Very intriguing...

I was curious to see if Google would convert a noun into an adjective -- for example, would "~Gore -Gore" return search results with "boring" or "wooden"?

I didn't see anything about the ex-Veep being boring. But check out what you do see: Google thinks Gore is synonymous with Bush. I guess Ralph Nader was right after all ...

Heh ... Google also thinks that Republican is synonymous with Democrat.

Scottish = Scotland, Celtic, Edinburgh, BBC (?!), Gaelic and Glasgow.

No Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling or Inverness (the other of Scotland 6 cities) and thankfully no kilts haggis or bagpipes!

It doesn't work :-/

Try searching for "~sex -sex"

You will have plenty of results containing the word sex.

"Younger, hipper Beck?" Definitely a matter of opinion, my friend. Even the so-called younger, hipper Beck might disagree with that statement.

I entered "~dollar -dollar" and the results were about an even split between matches for "car" and "money", with "car" ranking slightly higher. Does this make sense to anybody? Somewhat ironically, a search for "~terrorism -terrorism" yields hits for "government". And "script" and "perl" seem to be considered synonyms, but "php" has no synonyms and "python" only seems to match "xml". How did they come up with these synonyms?

My bet is that they're words that are commonly used together in context.

It does seem to work for other languages as well. If I search for the dutch word for house: "~huis -huis" it will also search for "woning" (which is a synonym) and "makelaar" (real estate agent) which (at least) is a related term.

Searching for "~boeken -boeken" (books) and it wil also find the singular "boek" but also the dutch word for book shop "boekhandel"

Both examples are from commercially interesting categories of words.

CPU results in Upgrade, AMD, Processor, Athlon, Pentium, Pentium III, Microprocessor

Clinton = Bush

Mozilla = HTML

HTML = script, netscape, tutorial, tag

ie = browser, windows, microsoft, ireland, explorer, ie5.5, ie6

evil = dark

windows = microsoft, win, exe, nt, desktop, win32

xp = office, 2000, windows, whistler, winxp, rc1, me, "extreme programming"

anime = cartoon, animal, animation, anim, "sailor moon", pokemon, "tenchi muyo", "gundam wing"

Google seems to be an ecologist:
tree = history

Government = Employment (among other things)
...for some of us, anyway.

hustler = penthouse, barely legal

Try ~geek -geek.

LMAO. Nice find, Karl.

groove = funk & grove(?)
god = does not work
straight = does not work
hate = anti (not despise or detest)

It is nonsense!

Google's math also seems to be more than a bit fuzzy. "Eight" equals "nine", "nine" equals both "seven" and "eleven". And "seven" equals "modern", for some reason. "phi" is a synonym for "pi", and "pi" seems to be a synonym of "times".

~xp -xp = us copyright

love this site, but isn't it about time for a new post?

~indian -indian = indiana

It is simply magnificent,fantastic,marvellous,superb,thrilling and excellent.

Heist and steal get no results, but rob gets you to a whole lotta people. By the way, anyone tried the synonym operator on Adwords?

Toys are a synonym for babies

guest is a synonym for dude!!!

~jelly -jelly = Wine

that doesn't make much sense

~linux -linux = Debian ;)

~linux -linux = Debian Redhat RPM ;)

Here are some more really good ones:
~stupid -stupid
~dumb -dumb

hey just a suggestion make this more easy to find things and do like synonym dictionary on it so that it is way eaiser to do homework on t
thanks Michelle

~training -training = education schools Learning TRAIN :-(

So how do we do this for phrases? Should it be something like:

~telephone pole -telephone pole

or like this:
~"telephone pole" -"telephone pole"

???

OK, doing the phrases with quotes search doesn't return anything, i.e.:
~"baby toys" -"baby toys"

and doing:
~baby toys -baby toys

still gives you the word 'toys', but doing this:
~baby ~toys -baby -toys

does give synonyms (infant, games, child).

type in ~president -president. You get bill for the main return which includes the bill of rights, bill gates, yahoo bill pay, and bush, among many other things

type in ~bush -bush. You get nothing. Type in ~busch -busch You get lots of info on President bush. I don't know why though.

I tried typing in ~god -god and got nothing. I tried typing in ~sex -sex and got nothing. I see that someone above typed these in and got results. Is anyone else getting results for these still?

Oh, I take that back. There were no results returned to anyone for god and no results returned for sex. I noticed today that the results I get for certain keywords are different than words that were returned yesterday. Anyone know why there would be a change?

Google's math also seems to be more than a bit fuzzy. "Eight" equals "nine", "nine" equals both "seven" and "eleven". And "seven" equals "modern", for some reason. "phi" is a synonym for "pi", and "pi" seems to be a synonym of "times".