Way back in university, one of my translation profs mentioned a concept called a "Google vote". If you're trying to figure out which of several constructions is more commonly used, a quick and dirty method is to do a Google search for each and see which one has the most hits. It isn't always 100% reliable (Sometimes there are regionalisms, and sometimes a sequence of words doesn't mean what you intend it to mean. For example, when I was researching this post and googling for "prom baby", most of the hits were "Prom, baby!")
Since then, Google has become more flexible in response to search terms, using conjugations and declensions and synonyms in an attempt to help lead users to what they're looking for. All of which is useful if you're searching for information, but less useful if you're using Google as a linguistic corpus.
Fortunately, Google has also introduced the Verbatim search function. Do your search normally, then, on the results page, click on "Search Tools". Then, under "All results", select "Verbatim". This makes Google search for exactly what you typed, without trying to help you.
For example, the inspiration of this post is that I was trying to figure out if the present indicative of the verb that gives us "dissing" and "dissed" is "dis" or "diss". Normally, Google results would show them interchangeably on the assumption that they're both intended to mean the same thing. So, to do a Google vote, I used the Verbatim functions so I would only get results for "dis" or "diss", not for both.
The problem is that Google doesn't show the number of results on the Verbatim search results page like it does on other search pages, which renders my Google vote useless. This is particularly irritating because the vast majority of the times I use the Verbatim function, the hit count is part of the information I'm seeking.
Dear Google: please put the hit count on all results pages, just in case someone needs it. You know the number of hits, so why not just serve it up?
2 comments:
I didn't know about the verbatim option! Thanks!
I hope they add the count for you.
Update: here's how to do it
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