Crossover phenomenon in the performance of an Internet search engine
This work addresses the problem of understanding search engine performance for non-semantic queries, such as typos or acronyms, for users and researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing concepts of search behavior.
The study investigated Google's ability to find random N-letter strings, revealing a sharp drop in success probability from one to zero at Nc = 6, indicating a transition-like phenomenon in the search space geometry.
In this work we explore the ability of the Google search engine to find results for random N-letter strings. These random strings, dense over the set of possible N-letter words, address the existence of typos, acronyms, and other words without semantic meaning. Interestingly, we find that the probability of finding such strings sharply drops from one to zero at Nc = 6. The behavior of such order parameter suggests the presence of a transition-like phenomenon in the geometry of the search space. Furthermore, we define a susceptibility-like parameter which reaches a maximum in the neighborhood, suggesting the presence of criticality. We finally speculate on the possible connections to Ramsey theory.