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Can anyone explain me why Meta Search Page restricts search counts ? I have no idea for limiting search counts and I don't expect as this..

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+Addition

I searched with some alphabets ( a...z ) . I found a strange thing. Finding with (b ... z ) characters and

( a ) character was different. Please check as below..

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Message show "Could not find any results......but showing results for a ...xxx".
I don't understand this message.
Why different for "a" character and why adding double code ("") in *a* ?
*a* is not a special character.
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  • searching with character "a" will automatically add double code ("").
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 9:11
  • I assume restriction on searching counts 30 per a minute is needless.
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 9:14
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    I'm certain the 30 search in 60 seconds limit has ever been hit by anyone doing genuine searches. I imagine it's there because they don't want some bot(/misbehaving user) to fire off 10,000 search requests each minute.
    – OGHaza
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 9:19
  • I could not reproduce the limit, got this though: i.sstatic.net/7Ra5p.png thanks for forcing me to take a break from the site! ;)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 9:20
  • by the way , searching page of meta site is so simple and so nice. :)
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 9:27

2 Answers 2

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Can anyone explain me why Meta Search Page restricts search counts ?

To prevent bots from spamming it like crazy - very rarely would anyone doing legitimate search hits ever encounter this.

( a ) character was different.

a is a stop word and irrelevant as a token in almost every search - so it's discarded unless explicitly included which is what quoting it does.

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  • yes ,really great. It is new for me . about English stopwords norm.al/2009/04/14/list-of-english-stop-words
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:18
  • and I would like to request to you ! can you explain what is message means to (that I described as )?
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:24
  • but searching with "all" word. That was include in english-stopwords but not like as "a".
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:31
  • @Cataclysm I don't understand your question. We're using a standard english stop word list that Lucene includes - for now that is. elasticsearch 1.0 disables them by default, so that'll be interesting.
    – Nick Craver Mod
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:32
  • Due to "a" is containing in stop-words list , so it is discarded . If so I expect "all" word also discarded but not.
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:37
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    @Cataclysm "all" is not an irrelevant word most of the time, why would it be discarded? Stop words are discarded because they add no value a very large majority of the time.
    – Nick Craver Mod
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:45
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The Letter a i think is on a "black list" like is, of or on, cause searching for these values results in the same message as for a.

So searches for words, that are on the "black list" are changed to an exact search ("a") to reduce the amount of results.

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  • yah... sure ! I think as so . I described as it is strange thing because b to z is ok . why not "a" ? :)
    – Cataclysm
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:02
  • @Cataclysm Thats a good question. I think it is so, cause a is a valid englisch word, while the others (except I) are not. Searching for i does not result in that message.
    – Jehof
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 11:06

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