searching and searching and searching for fanfic - 01/12/11 03:06 PM
I have a fic search question, I'm having trouble finding stories in the Archive and I son't know if it is a "me" thing or a Google thing.
First, I have to say that I have never knowingly used Google except on this site. Using my normal search engine I find articles I read 10 years ago within the top 5 hits without fail, so I know how to build searches.
Many, many times I know enough unique information that I should be able to search and pull up a story. For example, I remember one fic where:
*Lois's father is an avid Superman fan and Lois was named for the comic book character. She loves journalism though and to overcome the stigma has taken on very tough assignments. She has just done a stint as an embedded reporter in Iraq for CNN.
*Clark Kent saves a plane full of people in 1995, somehow cross dimensions and end up in our post 9/11 world. Clark only finds a swamp in Maryland where Metropolis should be.
*Lois gets video of the the plane landing and thinks she sees a man hanging underneath the plane.
*Clark loses his wallet.
*Many people from the plane are duplicates of people here. Fearful of infiltration, the government is holding people from the plane at Walter Reed Hospital.
*Flocks of many thousands of (extinct) passenger pigeons are seen migrating after the incident.
*Laptop computers from the plane are running NanoSoft operating systems.
*Lois eventually meets and tries to convince Clark to become Superman and takes him to the Superman Museum in Metropolis, Illinois to get one of Christopher Reeve's suits.
The story was good but finding it is irrelevant at this point. If this story was on the internet or on my harddrive I could combine unique words from the story and construct a text search like:
< Iraq AND embedded AND plane AND "passenger pigeon" AND Nanosoft AND "Walter Reed">
Other unusual words I might use would be "comic book", wallet, Illinois, extinct, museum, Maryland.
I know these words were used in the story. Even if half of the words were wrong I should be able to find the story by making a few substitutions in a few minutes. Searching for "Iraq" returns 7 entries (none are the right one). Searching for "passenger" returns 21,000 entries. Searching for "pigeon" returns 19,300 entries but "passenger AND pigeon" returns nothing.
This is very frustrating to me and it wastes a lot of time. Is this my issue, a Google issue or something else?
Thanks,
First, I have to say that I have never knowingly used Google except on this site. Using my normal search engine I find articles I read 10 years ago within the top 5 hits without fail, so I know how to build searches.
Many, many times I know enough unique information that I should be able to search and pull up a story. For example, I remember one fic where:
*Lois's father is an avid Superman fan and Lois was named for the comic book character. She loves journalism though and to overcome the stigma has taken on very tough assignments. She has just done a stint as an embedded reporter in Iraq for CNN.
*Clark Kent saves a plane full of people in 1995, somehow cross dimensions and end up in our post 9/11 world. Clark only finds a swamp in Maryland where Metropolis should be.
*Lois gets video of the the plane landing and thinks she sees a man hanging underneath the plane.
*Clark loses his wallet.
*Many people from the plane are duplicates of people here. Fearful of infiltration, the government is holding people from the plane at Walter Reed Hospital.
*Flocks of many thousands of (extinct) passenger pigeons are seen migrating after the incident.
*Laptop computers from the plane are running NanoSoft operating systems.
*Lois eventually meets and tries to convince Clark to become Superman and takes him to the Superman Museum in Metropolis, Illinois to get one of Christopher Reeve's suits.
The story was good but finding it is irrelevant at this point. If this story was on the internet or on my harddrive I could combine unique words from the story and construct a text search like:
< Iraq AND embedded AND plane AND "passenger pigeon" AND Nanosoft AND "Walter Reed">
Other unusual words I might use would be "comic book", wallet, Illinois, extinct, museum, Maryland.
I know these words were used in the story. Even if half of the words were wrong I should be able to find the story by making a few substitutions in a few minutes. Searching for "Iraq" returns 7 entries (none are the right one). Searching for "passenger" returns 21,000 entries. Searching for "pigeon" returns 19,300 entries but "passenger AND pigeon" returns nothing.
This is very frustrating to me and it wastes a lot of time. Is this my issue, a Google issue or something else?
Thanks,