5 ms·

This must be a recent change? It's been driving me nuts lately. I have to resort to adding a lot of negated search terms to compensate but it's still sub optima

This must be a recent change? It's been driving me nuts lately. I have to resort to adding a lot of negated search terms to compensate but it's still sub optimal.

JasonFruit 6y ago
It seems to me that after a few negated search terms are included, they are taken less strictly; "minus" seems to mean "probably minus".
GordonS 6y ago
No, this has been the case for a long time, years anyway. I don't know if it goes back quite as far as when they removed the '+' operator tho. But bejesus, this drives me nuts! If I know the double quotes function even exists, then Google should know I actually want to use it as intended - it shouldn't decide "yeah, but maybe you'd like these irrelevant results too!"
- jon_richards 6y ago
  I think it’s primarily for people copying and pasting something like an error message, which may have user-specific data in quotes. That should be what “not many results for...” is for, but Google is always trying to optimize away those clicks. Maybe they could add a “programatic” search feature with documented syntax for power users.
  - hwillis 6y ago
    A moderate-length string of quoted words (>5?) used to return zero or near zero results and a suggestion to try without quotes- imo ideal
  - mcswell 6y ago
    Maybe they should go back to +
  - hoseja 6y ago
    Add? They used to have one and actively removed it.
  - echelon 6y ago
    Power users aren't where the money is.
  - rozab 6y ago
    I am always surprised that these systems are not more friendly to engineers, since they were built by them. You'd think for their own sakes they'd stick in a system like xkcd.com/806/
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Use 'verbatim'. It's a drop down option, and it isn't as good as the old + or other operators (deprecated because of Google Plus). For example, with verbatim you can't only + one single thing in a search. Regardless, I basically just always search with verbatim on. Google is mostly useless otherwise.
  - librarianscott 6y ago
    Thank you. I quickly changed my default Chrome search to https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 instead of regular Google

This must be a recent change? It's been driving me nuts lately. I have to resort to adding a lot of negated search terms to compensate but it's still sub optimal.

JasonFruit 6y ago

It seems to me that after a few negated search terms are included, they are taken less strictly; "minus" seems to mean "probably minus".

GordonS 6y ago

No, this has been the case for a long time, years anyway. I don't know if it goes back quite as far as when they removed the '+' operator tho. But bejesus, this drives me nuts! If I know the double quotes function even exists, then Google should know I actually want to use it as intended - it shouldn't decide "yeah, but maybe you'd like these irrelevant results too!"

jon_richards 6y ago
I think it’s primarily for people copying and pasting something like an error message, which may have user-specific data in quotes. That should be what “not many results for...” is for, but Google is always trying to optimize away those clicks. Maybe they could add a “programatic” search feature with documented syntax for power users.
- hwillis 6y ago
  A moderate-length string of quoted words (>5?) used to return zero or near zero results and a suggestion to try without quotes- imo ideal
- mcswell 6y ago
  Maybe they should go back to +
- hoseja 6y ago
  Add? They used to have one and actively removed it.
- echelon 6y ago
  Power users aren't where the money is.
- rozab 6y ago
  I am always surprised that these systems are not more friendly to engineers, since they were built by them. You'd think for their own sakes they'd stick in a system like xkcd.com/806/
bbarnett 6y ago
Use 'verbatim'. It's a drop down option, and it isn't as good as the old + or other operators (deprecated because of Google Plus). For example, with verbatim you can't only + one single thing in a search. Regardless, I basically just always search with verbatim on. Google is mostly useless otherwise.
- librarianscott 6y ago
  Thank you. I quickly changed my default Chrome search to https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 instead of regular Google