For example, a search for "ca7112b7167c15e621412c0fbc0a6c97" brings up the URL "https://www.premierclearancecenterofstbernard.com/inventory/...", which has a gallery of vehicles at the bottom whose image names are of the format "9b362510c100095f02cf3cad9e365ea6.jpg".
I assume something inside the Google black box is saying "well, there's no exact match but this site has a bunch of strings with most of the same characters, so here you go".
Edit: And to add to this, I'd surmise that the reason you see a lot of car dealerships in these results is that they sell a lot of one-offs - instead of having a list of SKUs in inventory, they sell a unique vehicle just once, so the inventory systems need to account for that by using long strings as item IDs and the like. Also there's probably a limited number of inventory systems out there, so a bunch of random dealerships are probably all using the same one.
Basically, you did a fuzzy search and got a fuzzy result. Usually that's what people want. Quotes will let you fine-tune results. Or if you want all results to be strict by default, use verbatim mode. I tested that with the above string and again, only this thread showed up.
Agree with the peer - specificity matters. Model numbers are a good example. I feel like I've developed a weak form of dyslexia because I can't trust Google like I once did.
Things I want fuzzy searches for... will be presented fuzzy. Not as an opaque string of usually-quoted characters, but wrapped in keywords
A reply makes a good point - double quotes don't seem as effective any more.
I could have sworn google always was happy to return some odd url matches, typically when the given results weren't great.
I see this a lot when searching for phone numbers. I've also seen the opposite like the forced "find something no matter how terrible of a match to avoid no results" as being described. You search for a number and no exact matches, but it returns things with different area codes same prefix different numbers. Or same area code, different prefix, same numbers. Or some such randomness that I can't even venture a guess as to why it thought the not one number matches would be interesting to me. Unless you're brave, I'd suggest not searching for random phone numbers with Safe Search off as you'll find some very interesting pages displayed that have absolutely nothing to do with the number being searched.
Having said that I have recently had some kind of "nothing found" result on several occasions. So it still happens.
--edit--
In fact I just tried "ca7112b7167c15e621412c0fbc0a6c9" (omitting the last digit to avoid HN) and got:
Your search - "ca7112b7167c15e621412c0fbc0a6c9" - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
Make sure that all words are spelled correctly. Try different keywords. Try more general keywords.
The fact that Google returns car dealerships when the user is searching for hex strings is telling.
Why?
If so, would that be a good thing?
Why shouldn't I be able to find the vehicle via its ID?
I suspect it's something similar, but more like partial string match which may score as "close enough to display". I get consistent results with the same hex string - dealerships - but if I quote it (exact match), I get no matches.
If only there were some sort of standardized identification number for vehicles
I watched some government sale and they posted a PDF vehicles for sale that were forfeited.
The VINs where there but parts of it where blacked out.
It was a PDF. I copy-pasted the text behind the black box and got the full VIN.
You're such a hacker. As the world turns now, I'd expect some legislation that says if you copy the text from a badly created PDF, then you are the one to blame and not the one that made the bad document. You're clearly circumventing the intent. You you...criminal.
It's very technically legal because they do have the vehicle in their inventory, and you can test drive and buy it, but just not right then.
Ideas: 1. Vin numbers are 17 characters and don't contain I, O or Q, to prevent confusion with other letters. If you throw in lots of these always spaced by less than 17 characters, do you get fewer hits?
2. Does a VPN and/or private browsing affect the results?
A third possibility is that Google has cheaper ad category for search queries that they can't categorize. This doesn't explain the diversity of dealerships though.
3344cfb4 78ead204a49b88 1da6079adf8a
e2c75c64 eef8087f6f36df 57
eb944335 73626fe9b73550 b02a651620d8
Shoot, depending on crawling, this may end up causing this page to match. I'm injecting spaces above to deter this, but maybe it'll also prove out the partial string match theory...
Clicking on the 3 dots gives me this info:
Your search & this result
This result seems relevant even though this search term may not appear:
3344cfb478ead204a49b881da6079adf8aThere's a single word embedding for DARNED_IF_I_KNOW, and, statistically, automobile listings outnumber other pages with the DARNED_IF_I_KNOW token.
DIGITS=$((10 + $RANDOM % 10))
It's annoying when I want to search for a btih or something exact.