Google Definitions?

[SandraG]

I was wondering if any of you have any insight as to how Google chooses its results for the "define: word" search? Is it just a ranking of the phrase "word is *" or do they have some other method of determining when a result is a definition? Do they add in weight for terms like "glossary" or "dictionary"?

Thanks for any help!

[SandraG]

No one has any advice for me? Have I done something wrong? Is this question posted in the wrong area, or just too blindingly obvious? I'm new on this forum, so I'm not sure if I've made a mistake in my post. :(

[Tamar Weinberg]

It's a good question. I've seen dictionaries/glossaries whose definitions are not pulled up when you use the define: operator, but they've had these glossaries in place for months and the page *is* being crawled.

Perhaps the non-answer is that nobody really knows?

[SandraG]

Thank you for the response!

[JohnW]

According to the patent, Google crawls and indexes pages that contain definitions. Terms on the page or in titles of pages may trigger this, such as “glossary,” “definition,” “dictionary,” etc.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040236739%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040236739&RS=DN/20040236739

Hope this helps.

[SandraG]

Ah, interesting! That helps a lot, thank you :)