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> I work for Google Search. Quotes replaced the + operator Quotes existed before the + operator was removed. Unless the algorithm for quotes changed from exact

• dannysullivan 4y ago
  Quotes existed originally as a way to match phrases, more than one word. + was meant for matching a single word. Quotes replaced the way to match a single word, while still remaining the way to phrase search.
  • rattray 4y ago
    Hmm, that makes it sound like if I search: > lyrics "walk down the aisle at the store" it'll do an inexact phrase search, and if I do: > lyrics walk down the "aisle" at the "store" it'll do a normal search but with exact-match for aisle and store. But in this example, that doesn't appear to be the case - looks like the first example is exact match phrase search?
    • dannysullivan 4y ago
      Yes, that's exactly what it will do. But keep in mind that if you do [lyrics walk down the "aisle" at the "store"] by default we'll probably rank pages that have many of the words adjacent to each other because we can tell those are probably more relevant. That's why you might get the same or similar results to [lyrics "walk down the aisle at the store"] -- and it's why the post suggests not even using quotes at all at first, because we might get things fine without them.