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I have Google routinely deciding that I didn't mean to use ALL three words I searched for and "helpfully" dropping them. Sure, I can tell it "no, I really want

I have Google routinely deciding that I didn't mean to use ALL three words I searched for and "helpfully" dropping them. Sure, I can tell it "no, I really want those", but the experience is definitely becoming more and more sub-par for me. As bad is when a search doesn't give me what I want, so I narrow it, only to find that Google uses my previous search to decide what I want to see so I still end up finding similar results. I remember when Google blew us away with Page Rank (goodbye Alta Vista!), but in the last few years Google has gotten so good on providing entry-level information that it's useless for finding specifics, so I expect the next Big Thing in search to come along, though I have no idea how far out it is.

kibwen 8y ago
Fun example of this: last week I was trying to figure out all the floating point operations that can produce NaN. Go ahead and try searching Google for "ways to make nan"; it's going to show you dozens of pages of naan recipes, and there isn't even a link to click to make it actually search for what you've typed (instead there's a link for Did you mean "ways to make naan"?, which shows a different set of naan recipes).
- noxToken 8y ago
  Although the tailored results have been useful, I think I still like the days back when you needed search operators. I was once looking up stuff about electrons (the particle). A plain query of electron only returned results for the framework on my first page. Understandable. The other annoyance is the lack of Wikipedia results. For a general topic, I like to have a few pages to chooses from about the topic in addition to Wikipedia. Rarely are Wikipedia results in my organic listing unless I specifically add wiki or Wikipedia. By the way, this[0] is how to search your query. [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=ways+to+make+%22nan%22+-%22naan%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=ways+to+make+%22nan%22+-%22n...
  - dhimes 8y ago
    Interesting. Wikipedia what my top result when I DDG'd "floating point operations that produce NaN"
- mda 8y ago
  Did you try your own sentence "floating point operations that can produce NaN." "Making nan"is a very tricky query, because it has no context that is related to floating point. I think it is not fair to expect anything else. If you give a slight context like "operations that make nan" you will get results.
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    Yeah, "ways to make nan", even being familiar with the domain, is an extremely unintuitive way to phrase that query.
- millstone 8y ago
  Holy cow that's bad. It says: Showing results for ways to make naan. Search instead for 'ways to make nan'. Fair enough, so click on the Search Instead and it says "Did you mean: ways to make naan" and then shows a bunch of links about breadmaking anyways.
- Drdrdrq 8y ago
  You can use: ways to make +"nan" Disclaimer: didn't test it, but I often use this trick to force G to use some word, and to use it exactly as written.
  - dwd 8y ago
    Google dropped support for + years ago but you could try using -naan and "nan". https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
    - nzjrs 8y ago
      OMG, well that could've been made more known. Wonder what the cumulative cost to my life has been.
    - dhimes 8y ago
      wow I didn't know that
    - Drdrdrq 8y ago
      Ha, what do you know... :D I actually always use startpage.com, but since they are using Google, I assumed they passed this query to it. What is interesting is that this trick still works on startpage.com while it doesn't on google... I must say I'm even less impressed by Google search than I was before. It's getting worse and worse.
- ape4 8y ago
  Its too bad it ignores the case of NaN (and other queries)
  - 00N8 8y ago
    idk, but I think they employ multiple tokenizing strategies, including case insensitive, case sensitive,by words, by n-grams of letters...
- sanowski 8y ago
  a search for your question "all the floating point operations that can produce NaN" gave useful results for me.

kibwen 8y ago

Fun example of this: last week I was trying to figure out all the floating point operations that can produce NaN. Go ahead and try searching Google for "ways to make nan"; it's going to show you dozens of pages of naan recipes, and there isn't even a link to click to make it actually search for what you've typed (instead there's a link for Did you mean "ways to make naan"?, which shows a different set of naan recipes).

noxToken 8y ago
Although the tailored results have been useful, I think I still like the days back when you needed search operators. I was once looking up stuff about electrons (the particle). A plain query of electron only returned results for the framework on my first page. Understandable. The other annoyance is the lack of Wikipedia results. For a general topic, I like to have a few pages to chooses from about the topic in addition to Wikipedia. Rarely are Wikipedia results in my organic listing unless I specifically add wiki or Wikipedia. By the way, this[0] is how to search your query. [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=ways+to+make+%22nan%22+-%22naan%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=ways+to+make+%22nan%22+-%22n...
- dhimes 8y ago
  Interesting. Wikipedia what my top result when I DDG'd "floating point operations that produce NaN"
mda 8y ago
Did you try your own sentence "floating point operations that can produce NaN." "Making nan"is a very tricky query, because it has no context that is related to floating point. I think it is not fair to expect anything else. If you give a slight context like "operations that make nan" you will get results.
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  Yeah, "ways to make nan", even being familiar with the domain, is an extremely unintuitive way to phrase that query.
millstone 8y ago
Holy cow that's bad. It says: Showing results for ways to make naan. Search instead for 'ways to make nan'. Fair enough, so click on the Search Instead and it says "Did you mean: ways to make naan" and then shows a bunch of links about breadmaking anyways.
Drdrdrq 8y ago
You can use: ways to make +"nan" Disclaimer: didn't test it, but I often use this trick to force G to use some word, and to use it exactly as written.
- dwd 8y ago
  Google dropped support for + years ago but you could try using -naan and "nan". https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
  - nzjrs 8y ago
    OMG, well that could've been made more known. Wonder what the cumulative cost to my life has been.
  - dhimes 8y ago
    wow I didn't know that
  - Drdrdrq 8y ago
    Ha, what do you know... :D I actually always use startpage.com, but since they are using Google, I assumed they passed this query to it. What is interesting is that this trick still works on startpage.com while it doesn't on google... I must say I'm even less impressed by Google search than I was before. It's getting worse and worse.
ape4 8y ago
Its too bad it ignores the case of NaN (and other queries)
- 00N8 8y ago
  idk, but I think they employ multiple tokenizing strategies, including case insensitive, case sensitive,by words, by n-grams of letters...
sanowski 8y ago
a search for your question "all the floating point operations that can produce NaN" gave useful results for me.