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Some search engines seem to just completely ignore quotes now, it's very frustrating especially when I know what I want to search and the search engine just isn

Some search engines seem to just completely ignore quotes now, it's very frustrating especially when I know what I want to search and the search engine just isn't letting me.

Gigachad 4y ago
My best guess is its because people pasting things in with quotes are met with no results. Stuff like error messages often quote the only unique bit of the error leaving them with no results while ignoring the quotes would give them the result they want. Probably the vast majority of the population have no idea that quotes do anything in searches. Maybe they need some checkbox in the tools bar that makes quotes actually work if you know how they work.
- ehnto 4y ago
  And the vast majority of the population is who use Google now, rather than web enthusiasts. It was probably causing people to get no results when they had quotes, and most people wouldn't know why.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    how hard would it be for Googs to do the search as requested, see no results, then try without quotes? they do this for other things that annoy the F out of me. for example, searching for a phone number. it's a specific set of numbers that is unique. if there's no results for that number (or very few), it gives me results for numbers that are similar like same area code, same prefix, different number. nope. that's not useful. in this situation, I'd much rather see that no results are found rather than making me think there's a result but forcing me to look closely that it is what I wanted
    - ehnto 4y ago
      That's really not what I want quotes to do though, I want a definitive "not found". But it might be a good compromise. Their whole jam now seems to be zero UI except the box, no filters no exact match checkboxes etc. Stuff like that would be really nice to have on the main search.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        yeah, but then where's the line? if you start adding checkboxes or other switches to control the search, the next thing you know you have something that looks like a gnarly ffmpeg cmd
        Siira 4y ago
        A gnarly ffmpeg CLI is exactly what we need for a service as complex as search. The people who can use such an interface are a tiny fraction, but they will produce a majority of economic innovation nonetheless.
        Izkata 4y ago
        Guess what: https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search
    - nomel 4y ago
      I would prefer a "technical user" mode. Heck, they could hide the option until they've deemed me "technical", by looking at my search terms. Anything is better than giving me pages and pages that don't contain the quoted term I'm looking for.
      - TuringTest 4y ago
        That mode exists, it's labelled "verbatim".
        nomel 4y ago
        Verbatim is useful, but it's also going to an extreme.
    - noduerme 4y ago
      Also, how hard would it be for the majority of the population to learn this? They're perfectly capable of using the internet to find illegal drugs, porn and dirt on their dating partners. It's not like using quotes to get verbatim results is rocket science.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      I work for Google Search and yes, that's something we are considering. No promise it will happen, but we do understand it might help people better understand there's no matches for what they wanted (though we do say that now, when it happens).
- inimino 4y ago
  If there's no results, you have plenty of room for a "No results. Try without quotes?" bright blue link.
- dannysullivan 4y ago
  We don't need a checkbox because if you use quotes, we will match only content in the quotes, as our post explains. If there's no content at all that matches, only in that case will we show a message making it clear there's no match and that we've conducted a search without quotes.
ramraj07 4y ago
The irony was that googles original claim to fame was that it was the first engine to start including all terms by default and respecting quotes perfectly. Then they just went back on it. Maybe it’s SEO pressure, or maybe it’s just incompetent product owners who didn’t understand what made their product click.
- ratg13 4y ago
  I think they just assume that they know better what you want than you do. That you probably don't want the thing you're searching for, but some alternate spelling, even if it's something completely different. I imagine this probably ends up being the case for the majority of their users, but for advanced users and people searching for specific technical strings, they've cheapened their service.
- dannysullivan 4y ago
  I work for Google Search. We never changed how we used quotes as a restriction tool. People seem to have had that impression because our snippets changed to not reflect where we were finding the terms. Hopefully our new snippet change will help stop that impression.
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    If you did not change how the quotes interact with the indexed text for a page, but you did change the mapping from pages to indexed text, then you have changed how you use quotes as a restriction tool.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by "mapping from pages to index text" but no, we didn't make any change in terms of retrieval. None. Use quotes, we look for pages that have the quoted material and only show those pages. The change we announced this week was about how we display snippets -- descriptions -- of those pages. Now the snippets will show examples of where we found the quoted terms, when sometimes the snippets didn't. But even if they didn't, the quoted terms were on the page.

Some search engines seem to just completely ignore quotes now, it's very frustrating especially when I know what I want to search and the search engine just isn't letting me.

Gigachad 4y ago

My best guess is its because people pasting things in with quotes are met with no results. Stuff like error messages often quote the only unique bit of the error leaving them with no results while ignoring the quotes would give them the result they want. Probably the vast majority of the population have no idea that quotes do anything in searches. Maybe they need some checkbox in the tools bar that makes quotes actually work if you know how they work.

ehnto 4y ago
And the vast majority of the population is who use Google now, rather than web enthusiasts. It was probably causing people to get no results when they had quotes, and most people wouldn't know why.
- dylan604 4y ago
  how hard would it be for Googs to do the search as requested, see no results, then try without quotes? they do this for other things that annoy the F out of me. for example, searching for a phone number. it's a specific set of numbers that is unique. if there's no results for that number (or very few), it gives me results for numbers that are similar like same area code, same prefix, different number. nope. that's not useful. in this situation, I'd much rather see that no results are found rather than making me think there's a result but forcing me to look closely that it is what I wanted
  - ehnto 4y ago
    That's really not what I want quotes to do though, I want a definitive "not found". But it might be a good compromise. Their whole jam now seems to be zero UI except the box, no filters no exact match checkboxes etc. Stuff like that would be really nice to have on the main search.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      yeah, but then where's the line? if you start adding checkboxes or other switches to control the search, the next thing you know you have something that looks like a gnarly ffmpeg cmd
      - Siira 4y ago
        A gnarly ffmpeg CLI is exactly what we need for a service as complex as search. The people who can use such an interface are a tiny fraction, but they will produce a majority of economic innovation nonetheless.
        Izkata 4y ago
        Guess what: https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search
  - nomel 4y ago
    I would prefer a "technical user" mode. Heck, they could hide the option until they've deemed me "technical", by looking at my search terms. Anything is better than giving me pages and pages that don't contain the quoted term I'm looking for.
    - TuringTest 4y ago
      That mode exists, it's labelled "verbatim".
      - nomel 4y ago
        Verbatim is useful, but it's also going to an extreme.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    Also, how hard would it be for the majority of the population to learn this? They're perfectly capable of using the internet to find illegal drugs, porn and dirt on their dating partners. It's not like using quotes to get verbatim results is rocket science.
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    I work for Google Search and yes, that's something we are considering. No promise it will happen, but we do understand it might help people better understand there's no matches for what they wanted (though we do say that now, when it happens).
inimino 4y ago
If there's no results, you have plenty of room for a "No results. Try without quotes?" bright blue link.
dannysullivan 4y ago
We don't need a checkbox because if you use quotes, we will match only content in the quotes, as our post explains. If there's no content at all that matches, only in that case will we show a message making it clear there's no match and that we've conducted a search without quotes.

ramraj07 4y ago

The irony was that googles original claim to fame was that it was the first engine to start including all terms by default and respecting quotes perfectly. Then they just went back on it. Maybe it’s SEO pressure, or maybe it’s just incompetent product owners who didn’t understand what made their product click.

ratg13 4y ago
I think they just assume that they know better what you want than you do. That you probably don't want the thing you're searching for, but some alternate spelling, even if it's something completely different. I imagine this probably ends up being the case for the majority of their users, but for advanced users and people searching for specific technical strings, they've cheapened their service.
dannysullivan 4y ago
I work for Google Search. We never changed how we used quotes as a restriction tool. People seem to have had that impression because our snippets changed to not reflect where we were finding the terms. Hopefully our new snippet change will help stop that impression.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  If you did not change how the quotes interact with the indexed text for a page, but you did change the mapping from pages to indexed text, then you have changed how you use quotes as a restriction tool.
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "mapping from pages to index text" but no, we didn't make any change in terms of retrieval. None. Use quotes, we look for pages that have the quoted material and only show those pages. The change we announced this week was about how we display snippets -- descriptions -- of those pages. Now the snippets will show examples of where we found the quoted terms, when sometimes the snippets didn't. But even if they didn't, the quoted terms were on the page.