Google Increases Maximum Number of Query Terms

Some exciting news for Google searchers.

Since Google’s introduction the maximum number of search terms you could include in a query string was 10. As of today, that has changed. Tara Calishain at ResearchBuzz and Philipp Lenssen on Google Blogoscoped have posted that the maximum number of terms allowed in a search query is now 32. Lenssen’s post includes several examples of how this might useful but also points out that the 10 word query limit is still in place for Google Groups and Google News. I can report that the 10 word limit remains the limit with Google Scholar.

Many of the other large general purpose web engines (Yahoo, Jeeves, MSN) don’t place limits on the number of terms in a query.

With this change (good news and a long time coming) I think advanced searchers would now like to see Google offer (nested)(searching), remove the 101kb page cutoff, offer truncation, and be more precise about what backlinks they do and do not show. Oh yes, how could I forget, offer a proximity operator. As of today, Exalead is the only web engine to offer one. AltaVista used to make one available.

TaggedAltaVistaMSNPhilipp Lenssen
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