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phpthrowaway99

My personal moment when I realized Google isn't as smart as I thought, came from searching phone numbers.

A number calls me.

I type in the number with spaces to Google to try and find it. No results. Nothing.

I add dashes. Results come up.

I put the area code in parentheses, different results come up.

If google can't figure out how to search 9 digit numbers against phone numbers correctly, I'm not sure I can trust them for anything.

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Identifying something as a phone number is very difficult. https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO...

Those things are all true, but if I search Google for: 510 555 1212 It shouldn't take massive AI and 25 phds to find a result for a company that lists 510-555-1212 as their phone number.

Ok maybe it does. But it's not like Google is a startup and they haven't had time to get around to it.

And add in the fact that if I do search 510 555-1212 I really wish they could atleast bring up (510) 555-1212.

I guess for now I'll give them a pass on 510.555.1212

Wow, you're smarter than I am, or at least more persistent. I ran into the same thing and I figured it was some sort of privacy issue or something and just switched to looking the numbers up on Bing. Pretty sure it used to work to google numbers without the dashes.

My only source for this claim is my memory but google was better for phone number reverse lookup in the past.

I wonder whether google has nerfed their own search results for phone numbers and email addresses.

i believe they have, as it probably opened the door for too much nefarious use back when it worked well

I was under the impression spam callers in particular actively randomize and spoof their numbers.

They definitely do. But I'm usually searching the number of real people I talked to that put in a lead. Eventually I can find something usually, I just have to try various forms of formatting usually.

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