Not Just the Highlights

The search conducted was for references to “Neill” that were close to “Rampley.” The results page highlighted the references to the names where two words appeared between them. There’s actually another reference where the names are separated by one word.

The reason for the highlighting is buried in the search code used to locate items and pull up the references. The key in this case, as in all newspaper searches where computerized “reading” and “searching” is conducted, is to read the entire page for additional references that may have been overlooked.

Figuring out precisely why the specific item was highlighted is left to those with knowledge of the algorithms used to return the search results. This serves as a reminder that things may (or may not) work exactly the way we think they do.