3 ms·

I don't know if it still forces the behavior you want, but it's possible that "Verbatim" mode will meet your needs. To activate it, look under the search bar

by nkurz 5y ago

I don't know if it still forces the behavior you want, but it's possible that "Verbatim" mode will meet your needs. To activate it, look under the search bar after you have results for the button marked "Tools". Click this, then change the pulldown from "All results" to "Verbatim". Alternatively (if doing it programatically) add "tbs=li:1" to the search query.

ColinWright 5y ago
That's a really interesting idea. I tried this search: "I'm not a mathematician or a puzzler" That returned this result: https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SpeakingAtThe2017MathsJam.html https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SpeakingAtThe2017MathsJam.htm... Sure enough, the phrase is on that page. Exactly that phrase. Then I followed your directions and switched to "Verbatim" mode, and got this result: Your search - "I'm not a mathematician or a puzzler" - did not match any documents. That's not what I was expecting.
- nkurz 5y ago
  I tried your example, and got what seem to be non-deterministic results. The first time I searched for "I'm not a mathematician or a puzzler", I got "No results", plus a long list of results for the same search without the quotes (which did not include solipsys.co.uk). I switched to Verbatim, and still got "No results", but no list of alternatives without the quotes. I then tried regular and Verbatim without the apostrophe in "I'm" ("Im", in case it was indexed without punctuation) and got the same non-results. Then I tried misspelling "mathmatician" an suddenly I got the hit on your site as a suggested alternative! Then I tried a regular search of the original correct phrase, and got your site as one would expect! Then I switched to Verbatim and again got "No results". I'm not sure what to make of this, but since the same search a couple minutes apart produced different results, there must be something happening behind the scenes. Maybe the different backends have different versions of the index, and Verbatim only uses the version without this phrase? Or maybe it's just chance and if one kept trying, one would eventually get it to work with Verbatim.
justinclift 5y ago
> To activate it, look under the search bar after you have results for the button marked "Tools". Hmmm, what search engine is that with? Guessing not DDG (?), as that's not showing a Tools button.
- nkurz 5y ago
  Google, as I'm pretty sure you guessed. The main context of Colin's question was that Google is no longer giving him the results that he wants. I responded within that context, although perhaps I should have been more explicit.
  - justinclift 5y ago
    Yeah, that was my guess as it's the common default. That being said, I've not actually used Google search (directly) in years so I wasn't really sure.

by nkurz 5y ago

ColinWright 5y ago

That's a really interesting idea. I tried this search: "I'm not a mathematician or a puzzler" That returned this result: https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SpeakingAtThe2017MathsJam.html https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SpeakingAtThe2017MathsJam.htm... Sure enough, the phrase is on that page. Exactly that phrase. Then I followed your directions and switched to "Verbatim" mode, and got this result: Your search - "I'm not a mathematician or a puzzler" - did not match any documents. That's not what I was expecting.

nkurz 5y ago
I tried your example, and got what seem to be non-deterministic results. The first time I searched for "I'm not a mathematician or a puzzler", I got "No results", plus a long list of results for the same search without the quotes (which did not include solipsys.co.uk). I switched to Verbatim, and still got "No results", but no list of alternatives without the quotes. I then tried regular and Verbatim without the apostrophe in "I'm" ("Im", in case it was indexed without punctuation) and got the same non-results. Then I tried misspelling "mathmatician" an suddenly I got the hit on your site as a suggested alternative! Then I tried a regular search of the original correct phrase, and got your site as one would expect! Then I switched to Verbatim and again got "No results". I'm not sure what to make of this, but since the same search a couple minutes apart produced different results, there must be something happening behind the scenes. Maybe the different backends have different versions of the index, and Verbatim only uses the version without this phrase? Or maybe it's just chance and if one kept trying, one would eventually get it to work with Verbatim.

justinclift 5y ago

> To activate it, look under the search bar after you have results for the button marked "Tools". Hmmm, what search engine is that with? Guessing not DDG (?), as that's not showing a Tools button.

nkurz 5y ago
Google, as I'm pretty sure you guessed. The main context of Colin's question was that Google is no longer giving him the results that he wants. I responded within that context, although perhaps I should have been more explicit.
- justinclift 5y ago
  Yeah, that was my guess as it's the common default. That being said, I've not actually used Google search (directly) in years so I wasn't really sure.