Today I got an error message in .NET 2.0 ("Failed to start monitoring changes to...", error code -2147023570). Try to search for this error code with Google you will get a funny result: Click here. I could only get the root page of all the domains, no page could be found that was not the default web server page, no file in a subfolder. In the top you will ses that there are about 9.670.000.000 including this number. You can find this number if you click on the cached version of the search result, the url of the cached item will look like this:

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:M0kw1cwIZTUJ:www.mydomain.com/+-2147023570&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4

If you add site:.de to your search you get a list of domains only from the German TLD, and again only domain entry pages.

On thing i noticed, too, was the special section in the Google search results first page. If you entered a wrong search text and Google thinks that you mean something different, you get a notice: "Did you mean: XYZ". But if you search for -2147023570 you get a section (separated by a line) that says: "See results for 2147023570". There you will see three links that are not the domain entry pages, and this section I never saw.

Did you know what this "error number" causes Google to show only domains? Do you have other similar search queries?

8 Comments

• Tim said Monday, March 6, 2006 11:06:00 AM

  That looks to me like it returns all pages that dont have the number 2147023570 in it (since - is the exclusionary operator).
  
  As to why it only shows domains is beyond me but it may have something to do with that (or possibly due to the enormous amount of results). A search for a single search term with a - prefix seems to cause the domain only results.
  
  And that section of 3 results appears to be a preview for if you search for 2147023570.

• Robert said Monday, March 6, 2006 12:19:00 PM

  The - in front is negating the search you seached for all pages without that number, goggle then combined all resuts from each domain into one entry (Similar pages)

• marko2511 said Monday, March 6, 2006 12:45:00 PM

  Sure. type anything with minus sign and that's it.
  
  Try -wzhsdzhfgh and you'll get same results.
  
  Regards

• COMALite J said Monday, March 6, 2006 5:34:00 PM

  If you actually want to search for a negative number such as an error code (most Mac OS errors are also negative numbers), you have to enclose it in quotes: thus, <q>"-2147023570"</q> instead of just <q>-2147023570</q>

• tatyan said Tuesday, March 7, 2006 10:33:00 AM

  it's not a bug, it's feature :)

• Adam Rogas said Thursday, March 9, 2006 7:38:00 AM

  You know what's great is that now your blog post shows up in the search results as well.

• Andy said Tuesday, March 28, 2006 10:01:00 AM

  The top result for 2147023570 (without the '-') is this page!

• oz0n3 said Saturday, April 1, 2006 6:24:00 PM

  check this google map search out