4 ms·

We haven't changed anything. Promise. Honest. Not at all. But we definitely want to look into any cases where people feel this isn't working, so actual examples

We haven't changed anything. Promise. Honest. Not at all. But we definitely want to look into any cases where people feel this isn't working, so actual examples (if people are comfortable sharing) will really help. What you're talking about is probably a case where there's a quoted word or phrase as well as other words that aren't quoted. In such a case, we're going to absolutely look for content that matches the quoted parts. That's a must. The other words, we'll look for them, but we'll also look for related words and sometimes, we might find content that doesn't match one of them. Because those other words aren't quoted, we'll tell you if we find a match that seems helpful but doesn't contain those non-quoted words. That's what the message is about. But it should never be telling you we omitted a quoted word or phrase because we won't -- with one exception. If there's literally nothing on the web we know of that matches a quoted word or phrase, then we're not going to show anything at all and say we couldn't match any documents.

primax 5y ago
Thanks Danny I'll try to whip up some examples. Interestingly I tried my pet peeve search, and it worked for the first time this year! It is for a specific recipe, and I search for 'ocau slow cooked balsamic beef'. I have had to manually find it in the archive of the overclockers.com.au forum for the past year, as Google seemingly forgot it existed no matter what search terms or operators I used. The main difference is I am using Firefox on Manjaro and not my historically typical environment for searching. Normally I would either be using Chrome on Windows or Chrome on iOS if I am in the kitchen. I will play around on some other devices and see what evidence I can find. P.s. I'm being referred in for a role at Google currently, is the Search team only in a specific area like Silicon Valley or is it a global team? Most of the jobs in Australia seem to be commercial facing, not product facing.
- dannysullivan 5y ago
  Glad to hear that works! Search has teams around the world. I'd suggest if you see something relevant, apply even if it's in a particular location. Remote work has changed a lot things.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    I hear that g search uses humans to quality check search results. How can I sign up to do this? From what I have read, it is invite only
    - dannysullivan 5y ago
      It's not really an open invite thing. And it's definitely not that rating is done for direct ranking purposes. These explain more about the process: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/ https://blog.google/products/search/overview-our-rater-guidelines-search/ https://blog.google/products/search/overview-our-rater-guide... https://blog.google/products/search/raters-experiments-improve-google-search/ https://blog.google/products/search/raters-experiments-impro...
varenc 5y ago
I tried to find a counterexample and I couldn't! I believe you that quotes really are working. What's confusing though is that a quoted word or phrase often doesn't show up in the Google results snippets. This is certainly the reason why people think quotes aren't being respected. Though, why does enabling "Verbatim" (in tools) on a search reduce the number of search results if all my terms are already quoted? Enabling Verbatim often does it make it feels like my queries are interpreted more literally, but if quotes are already being respected I don't understand how Verbatim would reduce the number of search results.
- dannysullivan 5y ago
  I agree, it would be easier if it were in the snippet. That's something we're looking at. I believe it used to, but sometimes the quoted part might not have been the best overall snippet to use. But as said, we might revisit that. On the counts -- basically, it's all really rough estimates. We make a rough quick count, you go deeper into the page, we make a fresh estimate. It can change, and it doesn't always make sense and personally, I'd hope we just get rid of counts because of this, perhaps more confusing than helpful.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  Side note: I recently complained that DDG doesn’t respect quotes, and I provided examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30236102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30236102 Thank you, Google, for continuing to respect quotes!
8192kjshad09- 5y ago
Hey, thanks for much for this comment. I've personally experienced this and looked myself for an example when I first read your comment, but I couldn't find one. Today I stumbled upon one. Here's a broken example query: linux next hop "[::]" Here's the archive of the incorrect query result: https://archive.md/9WGe7 https://archive.md/9WGe7 The first result (the man pages) does not contain [::] anywhere in the page text, the source, or the cached result. Could you take a look at this one?

primax 5y ago

Thanks Danny I'll try to whip up some examples. Interestingly I tried my pet peeve search, and it worked for the first time this year! It is for a specific recipe, and I search for 'ocau slow cooked balsamic beef'. I have had to manually find it in the archive of the overclockers.com.au forum for the past year, as Google seemingly forgot it existed no matter what search terms or operators I used. The main difference is I am using Firefox on Manjaro and not my historically typical environment for searching. Normally I would either be using Chrome on Windows or Chrome on iOS if I am in the kitchen. I will play around on some other devices and see what evidence I can find. P.s. I'm being referred in for a role at Google currently, is the Search team only in a specific area like Silicon Valley or is it a global team? Most of the jobs in Australia seem to be commercial facing, not product facing.

dannysullivan 5y ago
Glad to hear that works! Search has teams around the world. I'd suggest if you see something relevant, apply even if it's in a particular location. Remote work has changed a lot things.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  I hear that g search uses humans to quality check search results. How can I sign up to do this? From what I have read, it is invite only
  - dannysullivan 5y ago
    It's not really an open invite thing. And it's definitely not that rating is done for direct ranking purposes. These explain more about the process: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/ https://blog.google/products/search/overview-our-rater-guidelines-search/ https://blog.google/products/search/overview-our-rater-guide... https://blog.google/products/search/raters-experiments-improve-google-search/ https://blog.google/products/search/raters-experiments-impro...

varenc 5y ago

I tried to find a counterexample and I couldn't! I believe you that quotes really are working. What's confusing though is that a quoted word or phrase often doesn't show up in the Google results snippets. This is certainly the reason why people think quotes aren't being respected. Though, why does enabling "Verbatim" (in tools) on a search reduce the number of search results if all my terms are already quoted? Enabling Verbatim often does it make it feels like my queries are interpreted more literally, but if quotes are already being respected I don't understand how Verbatim would reduce the number of search results.

dannysullivan 5y ago
I agree, it would be easier if it were in the snippet. That's something we're looking at. I believe it used to, but sometimes the quoted part might not have been the best overall snippet to use. But as said, we might revisit that. On the counts -- basically, it's all really rough estimates. We make a rough quick count, you go deeper into the page, we make a fresh estimate. It can change, and it doesn't always make sense and personally, I'd hope we just get rid of counts because of this, perhaps more confusing than helpful.
ryantgtg 5y ago
Side note: I recently complained that DDG doesn’t respect quotes, and I provided examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30236102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30236102 Thank you, Google, for continuing to respect quotes!

8192kjshad09- 5y ago

Hey, thanks for much for this comment. I've personally experienced this and looked myself for an example when I first read your comment, but I couldn't find one. Today I stumbled upon one. Here's a broken example query: linux next hop "[::]" Here's the archive of the incorrect query result: https://archive.md/9WGe7 https://archive.md/9WGe7 The first result (the man pages) does not contain [::] anywhere in the page text, the source, or the cached result. Could you take a look at this one?