The post specifically did NOT tell people to make use of quotes when searching. It said the opposite, and simply explained the change with snippets is to better

The post specifically did NOT tell people to make use of quotes when searching. It said the opposite, and simply explained the change with snippets is to better help those who decide they do want to use quote searching for whatever reason. Here's what we said (I work for Google): Using quotes can definitely be a great tool for power users. We generally recommend first doing any search in natural language without resorting to operators like quotation marks. Years ago, many people used operators because search engines sometimes needed additional guidance. Things have advanced since then, so operators are often no longer necessary. By default, our systems are designed to look for both the exact words and phrases entered and related terms and concepts, which is often useful. If you use a quoted search, you might miss helpful content that uses closely related words. Of course, there are those times when the exact word being on a page makes all the difference. For those situations, quoted searches remain available and are now even better.