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Are you saying you haven't seen Google return results that don't contain your search terms, or if they do contain the terms they're only in metadata (og tags an

Are you saying you haven't seen Google return results that don't contain your search terms, or if they do contain the terms they're only in metadata (og tags and the like)? I know verbatim mode is supposed to help with this but afaict there isn't a way to enable it permanently, making it awkward to use (especially on the mobile site). I've found Google search results to be poor these days but I don't keep a list of the searches that fail, so I don't have anything to share with you.

crazygringo 3y ago
> you haven't seen Google return results that don't contain your search terms Oh they absolutely do, and thank goodness. What turns out to be the most useful page often contains a synonym instead, which an exact query would have missed. But I've never seen Google return results that don't have anything to do with my search terms at all. Is that a problem you've had? Do you have an example query? The only bad searches I get are when a word/term has multiple meanings and the more popular one crowds out what I'm actually looking for... but then I just add terms to narrow it down and it fixes it.
- dpkirchner 3y ago
  I don't have an example query ready for you. I'll often see the problem when I include error messages, media titles, or model numbers in my searches, none of which have synonyms. Google will arbitrarily ignore at least one term, often silently. I don't take issue with spellcheck or even synonym suggestions, FWIW. It's that the results which include/are relevant to specifically requested terms appear below results that don't/aren't, sometimes way below. It hasn't always been this way but I can't pinpoint when results started getting worse.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    But that's easy to fix by putting in quotes. And Google will often highlight next to a search result "doesn't include <search term>", which you can click and Google will add the quotes for you. If you put all terms in quotes, Google generally won't ignore anything. It will tell you it couldn't find any results though, quite frequently.
    - dpkirchner 3y ago
      Sure, there are workarounds for the problem, some of which work reliably. In the grand scheme they're not even onerous, just annoying.
iLoveOncall 3y ago
I'm saying that I always find what I look for in the first page of Google, that's it. I don't care about having the right words in the right place if the results have what I'm searching for. But again, no example provided.

crazygringo 3y ago

> you haven't seen Google return results that don't contain your search terms Oh they absolutely do, and thank goodness. What turns out to be the most useful page often contains a synonym instead, which an exact query would have missed. But I've never seen Google return results that don't have anything to do with my search terms at all. Is that a problem you've had? Do you have an example query? The only bad searches I get are when a word/term has multiple meanings and the more popular one crowds out what I'm actually looking for... but then I just add terms to narrow it down and it fixes it.

dpkirchner 3y ago
I don't have an example query ready for you. I'll often see the problem when I include error messages, media titles, or model numbers in my searches, none of which have synonyms. Google will arbitrarily ignore at least one term, often silently. I don't take issue with spellcheck or even synonym suggestions, FWIW. It's that the results which include/are relevant to specifically requested terms appear below results that don't/aren't, sometimes way below. It hasn't always been this way but I can't pinpoint when results started getting worse.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  But that's easy to fix by putting in quotes. And Google will often highlight next to a search result "doesn't include <search term>", which you can click and Google will add the quotes for you. If you put all terms in quotes, Google generally won't ignore anything. It will tell you it couldn't find any results though, quite frequently.
  - dpkirchner 3y ago
    Sure, there are workarounds for the problem, some of which work reliably. In the grand scheme they're not even onerous, just annoying.

iLoveOncall 3y ago

I'm saying that I always find what I look for in the first page of Google, that's it. I don't care about having the right words in the right place if the results have what I'm searching for. But again, no example provided.