2006 June 30
One of the difficulties concerning searches for topics for common interest developments (CIDs) and property owners associations (POAs) is that an overwhelming number of hits is usually obtained.
The continuation of this post offers a practical method for reducing the number of hits by including other terms with appropriate Boolean algebra in the search string.
Don Nordeen
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Search Strings for CIDs and POAs (continued)
Fundamental Search Problems and Recommendations
The fundamental search problem arises because the terms of interest typically apply to more that just common interest developments (CIDs) and property owners associations (POAs), and because different names are used for CIDs and POAs, as described in Definitions/Glossary. To narrow the search, the various names for CIDs and POAs need to be included in the search strings. The Boolean algebra for all the names for CIDs and POAs plus the exclusion of intellectual property owners is:
- "property owners association" OR "homeowners association" OR "community association" OR "association of owners" OR "association of co-owners" OR "condominium association" OR "common interest development" OR "common interest community" OR "planned unit development" OR "planned development" -"intellectual property owners"
Intellectual property owners is excluded from the search search string by the minus sign in front of the term. Note that all terms are in quotation makes to exclude the terms, not the words in the terms. A Google Search with this search string still produces about 4,000,000 hits, which means there are that many web pages on the internet that satisfy the search string.
The usefulness of this base search string is to add your subject of interest at the beginning of the search string. For example, add "business judgment rule" in quotation marks in front of the base search string. The result is about 500 hits at the time of this search. Without the base search string, the result is 164,000 — all of the hits just including "business judgment rule". By adding the base search string, the result is reduced to about 500 — those that also satisfy the restriction to CIDs and POAs.
A related example is a search on "fiduciary duty". Without the base CID/POA search string, the result is about 3,460,000 hits. With the base search string included, the number of hits is about 30,200 hits. A search on the combination of "fiduciary duty" and "business judgment rule" and the base CID/POA string produces about 287 hits.
Recommendation — Paste the base CID/POA search string (text following the bullet above) into the Google Search and then make that a bookmark of favorite with a name such as "CID/POA Search". The begin every search by clicking on that bookmark or favorite and add your specific search words or terms at the beginning of the search string. Be sure to use quotation marks where your interest is a specific term.
Application with Other Search Engines
The same technique works with other search engines, but may produce a different number of hits.
- Google CID/POA Search — Reference. Produced about 4,000,000 hits.
- Yahoo CID/POA Search — Apparently, overloaded the search string capabilities. Edit search string to simplify, and try again.
- MSN CID/POA Search — Apparently, overloaded the search string capabilities. Edit search string to simplify, and try again.
- Dogpile CID/POA Search — Base CID/POA search produced on 17 hits.
Clicking on the above CID/POA Search links should produce the search results for the base CID/POA search string.
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Copyright 2009 © Donald L. Nordeen. All Rights Reserved. See Copying Posts on This Weblog.
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