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technical => computers, technology and the internet => Topic started by: Bubba on February 19, 2006, 05:26:40 pm

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Bubba on February 19, 2006, 05:26:40 pm

Anyone know?

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: andy_e on February 19, 2006, 09:17:47 pm

if you were to search for violent new breed 9a+ I'd put it as "violent new breed" AND "9a+" but you may not need the AND. You've probably tried that already though  :roll:

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Control freak on February 19, 2006, 10:12:12 pm

If you put it in quotes then this should work, and if you put a plus in front of that it should force it to use it as a search term eg +"+"

Theres no need to put AND in front of any terms. Google does it for you

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Bubba on February 19, 2006, 10:48:47 pm

Quote from: "Control freak"

If you put it in quotes then this should work, and if you put a plus in front of that it should force it to use it as a search term eg +"+"

That's what I've tried but it doesn't work.

I was hoping you could some how escape such characters, eg ++ or something but I can't find any info on it.

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: andy_e on February 20, 2006, 10:13:07 am

you know when you type a space and it comes up a whole load of numbers? fo example common knowledge.mpeg becomes common%20knowledge.mpeg... you could find out what that is and use that... (once again not much help :oops: )

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Control freak on February 22, 2006, 11:22:53 am

%20 I think represents the unicode character for a space in hex. Not really much help here but good guess

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: andy_e on February 23, 2006, 03:11:30 pm

Ah right.. I'm guessing there's a unicode character for + then?

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Bubba on February 23, 2006, 08:34:49 pm

I've tried to find a way of doing this, but not sure how - some characters work (eg Greek alphabet) but not sure what you'd use for +, -, etc.

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Control freak on February 23, 2006, 09:26:53 pm

What is it exactly that youre trying to search for?

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Bubba on February 23, 2006, 09:37:43 pm

I was trying to search about how to get content from a Sky + hard drive to a PC dvd burner - pretty mundane I know  :oops:

I've found the right place to ask that particular question, but being able to search for +, _, etc would be quite handy in other scenarios too.

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: squeek on February 23, 2006, 10:22:01 pm

I don't really know what you're all trying, but if you were searching for, say 9a+ violent new breed, if you put "9a+ violent new breed" into google then it searches for it.  link (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=9a%2B+violent+new+breed&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official)

You can hack the search URL and put the ascii hex code for the + symbol in (%2B), but why bother when just putting the + works?

If you're asking how you would put it on it's own then I don't know, but if it's pre/post fixed onto another word like 8a+, or sky+ then it just work entering it.  There is an o'reilly book called Google hacks that might be able to shed some light on it.

Title: How can you search for the "+" character in google
Post by: Bubba on February 24, 2006, 09:27:04 am

Yes, searching for "sky+" does work, but that's not what I'm after.

If you search for "sky +" then you are just effectively searching for "sky" - it just ignores the "+" completely.

Try searching for "3 + 2 = 5", and you get results like "3-2-5" - not much use.

It's not the end of the world, but I would really like to know how it's possible to escape such characters.