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Remember when we could use "+" to tell Google it must include a term and "-" to define what the search result must not include? This was helpful to filter out a

Remember when we could use "+" to tell Google it must include a term and "-" to define what the search result must not include? This was helpful to filter out advertisements and other useless nonsense while making sure to get what we want.

nazka 4y ago
Hmm what do you mean by could? It’s not possible anymore? So far it seems to be still there.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  IIRC not really, at least some times it will still return documents that do not have the exact "+'ed" term in it.
  - manholio 4y ago
    "-" still works, "+" was bastardized when Google launched Google+ but you can get similar functionality by surrounding your term in quotes, preventing it to be dropped.
    - gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
      “-“ works but I’ve seen it fail so many times that I’m more surprised when it actually filters it properly nowadays.
  - dreen 4y ago
    - works, quoting a word was the same as +
    - unicornporn 4y ago
      This is the right answer and I was under the impression that this was in the the Google fu crash course these days.
    - breakingcups 4y ago
      - doesn't work for pinterest
      - strken 4y ago
        When I enter the exact string "bed design ideas" into google images it includes pinterest results, while "bed design ideas -pinterest" excludes them. Is there a specific failure case for you?
      - Xelbair 4y ago
        -site:pinterest.com works perfectly, and i use it in my all queries where i search for images.
        appleflaxen 4y ago
        This should be the default, TBH. Why google thinks that an image search leading to pinterest is going to be helpful is beyond comprehension.
        rasz 4y ago
        >Why google thinks that an image search leading to pinterest is going to be helpful is beyond comprehension. Both founder/ex ceo and current ceo came from Google. Pinterest directly deposits >$xxxmil/quarter into google.
        iggldiggl 4y ago
        If the original source is still online I indeed prefer it, but occasionally some images of interest only survive on Pinterest, in which case a Pinterest result is better than nothing. Another thing is probably how images are indexed in the first place. Historically image search could only look at the text surrounding the image (and the alt-text, if provided) to get some sort of tenuous idea what an image was about. Pinterest provides some additional tags for each image, which can help make it more discoverable. Of course these days Google also runs image recognition (and OCR) on the images it indexes, but I suppose sometimes the tags added by Pinterest still provide some additional context without which the original image wouldn't have been found.
- jdefelice 4y ago
  It doesn't work as it once did, Google will still ignore +keyword, It broke with the introduction of Google's social platform Google+
  - monetus 4y ago
    Surely someone internally would have foreseen that? How in the hell was that greenlit.
    - jlampa 4y ago
      They have foreseen it, and the plus sign was replaced by quotation marks.
      - jonathanstrange 4y ago
        I thought these meant something else: +: the term following must be in the text (but may be stemmed) "": search for exactly this phrase (not stemmed) So for example: +hiking => a term like hike, hiking, hiker, etc. must be on the page +"hiking" => the string "hiking" must be on the page "hiking" trekking outdoor => look for the string "hiking" and preferably return results that contain it, though hits for trekking and outdoor (stemmed) suffice But apparently I'm wrong, and "" and + don't mean that any longer?
        dannysullivan 4y ago
        + hasn't been an operator for years with us now. Quotes mean find the exact term indicated, no stemming, nothing -- just an exact match.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        That's about as user unfriendly as it gets. Such things work their way into your muscle memory and to annoy 100% of your power users for some social media play that has nothing to do with search is textbook monopolistic behavior.
- slazaro 4y ago
  It just happened to me, where I added a "-word" term to narrow it down and the number of results increased somehow. That means that they're doing something behind the scenes that's not as simple as "remove all results that contain "word".
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    I work for Google Search. Yes, totally agree, it's weird when the count goes up. It's something I hope we can fix. But it's not because we ignored the - symbol. It's because the counts are very fast, rough estimates. And when you go into additional pages, we start to refine them. IE: we actually found more than the count displayed on the first page.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      > I work for Google Search A tangent. You have what I imagine is a hard job and, despite the many threads here about recent apparent quality decreases, the product brings enormous value to its users. Thanks for taking the time to discuss in this thread, it is very helpful to see your insights.
      - dannysullivan 4y ago
        Thank you. Forum discussions here and in other places are really useful ways to gather feedback. It directly drove the improvement we launched this week.
  - lupire 4y ago
    The "number" of results doesn't mean anything beyond a rough guess. it's an ad promlting the size of the index. You'll never be able to reach nearly all of them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
202206241203 4y ago
I got an idea: make search engine take useful results that you want and DALL-E them with ads to serve you mock websites with plausible content.
mancerayder 4y ago
It must have been important to Google to remove agency from the user. If the user is too specific in their search, it's more difficult to use information gathered about the user to fulfill what it appears their ultimate goal is: to spoonfeed. That's what it seems like to me, moving to a world where technology tells you what you want, and you spend less effort telling it. I think Netflix did a similar thing some time back, just with their front page. Originally it seemed like a place you went to look for things. At a later point, it seemed suddenly a bunch of things were shoved in your face by default, and looking for a thing seemed secondary. Recommendation Engine, is that what Silicon Valley believes they're innovating on? An Orwellian nightmare is what is being created.
- dannysullivan 4y ago
  The change from + to "" as a restriction option removed no "agency" from users. It provided exactly the same functionality, allowing anyone to require that a particular word or phrase be present in Google Search results.
  - criddell 4y ago
    Does Google document all of the current search operators? When I search for that I'm only finding secondary sources and have no idea if they are correct or not.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      We have a long-standing page here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 Also explained here: https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search Hopefully we'll get these even more detailed in the future.
  - Jtype 4y ago
    And removing "-"?
    - 4y ago

nazka 4y ago

Hmm what do you mean by could? It’s not possible anymore? So far it seems to be still there.

PeterisP 4y ago
IIRC not really, at least some times it will still return documents that do not have the exact "+'ed" term in it.
- manholio 4y ago
  "-" still works, "+" was bastardized when Google launched Google+ but you can get similar functionality by surrounding your term in quotes, preventing it to be dropped.
  - gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
    “-“ works but I’ve seen it fail so many times that I’m more surprised when it actually filters it properly nowadays.
- dreen 4y ago
  - works, quoting a word was the same as +
  - unicornporn 4y ago
    This is the right answer and I was under the impression that this was in the the Google fu crash course these days.
  - breakingcups 4y ago
    - doesn't work for pinterest
    - strken 4y ago
      When I enter the exact string "bed design ideas" into google images it includes pinterest results, while "bed design ideas -pinterest" excludes them. Is there a specific failure case for you?
    - Xelbair 4y ago
      -site:pinterest.com works perfectly, and i use it in my all queries where i search for images.
      - appleflaxen 4y ago
        This should be the default, TBH. Why google thinks that an image search leading to pinterest is going to be helpful is beyond comprehension.
        rasz 4y ago
        >Why google thinks that an image search leading to pinterest is going to be helpful is beyond comprehension. Both founder/ex ceo and current ceo came from Google. Pinterest directly deposits >$xxxmil/quarter into google.
        iggldiggl 4y ago
        If the original source is still online I indeed prefer it, but occasionally some images of interest only survive on Pinterest, in which case a Pinterest result is better than nothing. Another thing is probably how images are indexed in the first place. Historically image search could only look at the text surrounding the image (and the alt-text, if provided) to get some sort of tenuous idea what an image was about. Pinterest provides some additional tags for each image, which can help make it more discoverable. Of course these days Google also runs image recognition (and OCR) on the images it indexes, but I suppose sometimes the tags added by Pinterest still provide some additional context without which the original image wouldn't have been found.
jdefelice 4y ago
It doesn't work as it once did, Google will still ignore +keyword, It broke with the introduction of Google's social platform Google+
- monetus 4y ago
  Surely someone internally would have foreseen that? How in the hell was that greenlit.
  - jlampa 4y ago
    They have foreseen it, and the plus sign was replaced by quotation marks.
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago
      I thought these meant something else: +: the term following must be in the text (but may be stemmed) "": search for exactly this phrase (not stemmed) So for example: +hiking => a term like hike, hiking, hiker, etc. must be on the page +"hiking" => the string "hiking" must be on the page "hiking" trekking outdoor => look for the string "hiking" and preferably return results that contain it, though hits for trekking and outdoor (stemmed) suffice But apparently I'm wrong, and "" and + don't mean that any longer?
      - dannysullivan 4y ago
        + hasn't been an operator for years with us now. Quotes mean find the exact term indicated, no stemming, nothing -- just an exact match.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That's about as user unfriendly as it gets. Such things work their way into your muscle memory and to annoy 100% of your power users for some social media play that has nothing to do with search is textbook monopolistic behavior.
slazaro 4y ago
It just happened to me, where I added a "-word" term to narrow it down and the number of results increased somehow. That means that they're doing something behind the scenes that's not as simple as "remove all results that contain "word".
- dannysullivan 4y ago
  I work for Google Search. Yes, totally agree, it's weird when the count goes up. It's something I hope we can fix. But it's not because we ignored the - symbol. It's because the counts are very fast, rough estimates. And when you go into additional pages, we start to refine them. IE: we actually found more than the count displayed on the first page.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    > I work for Google Search A tangent. You have what I imagine is a hard job and, despite the many threads here about recent apparent quality decreases, the product brings enormous value to its users. Thanks for taking the time to discuss in this thread, it is very helpful to see your insights.
    - dannysullivan 4y ago
      Thank you. Forum discussions here and in other places are really useful ways to gather feedback. It directly drove the improvement we launched this week.
- lupire 4y ago
  The "number" of results doesn't mean anything beyond a rough guess. it's an ad promlting the size of the index. You'll never be able to reach nearly all of them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

202206241203 4y ago

I got an idea: make search engine take useful results that you want and DALL-E them with ads to serve you mock websites with plausible content.

mancerayder 4y ago

It must have been important to Google to remove agency from the user. If the user is too specific in their search, it's more difficult to use information gathered about the user to fulfill what it appears their ultimate goal is: to spoonfeed. That's what it seems like to me, moving to a world where technology tells you what you want, and you spend less effort telling it. I think Netflix did a similar thing some time back, just with their front page. Originally it seemed like a place you went to look for things. At a later point, it seemed suddenly a bunch of things were shoved in your face by default, and looking for a thing seemed secondary. Recommendation Engine, is that what Silicon Valley believes they're innovating on? An Orwellian nightmare is what is being created.

dannysullivan 4y ago
The change from + to "" as a restriction option removed no "agency" from users. It provided exactly the same functionality, allowing anyone to require that a particular word or phrase be present in Google Search results.
- criddell 4y ago
  Does Google document all of the current search operators? When I search for that I'm only finding secondary sources and have no idea if they are correct or not.
  - dannysullivan 4y ago
    We have a long-standing page here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 Also explained here: https://www.google.com/advanced_search https://www.google.com/advanced_search Hopefully we'll get these even more detailed in the future.
- Jtype 4y ago
  And removing "-"?
  - 4y ago