I believe it's always been the case that quotes work. Here are 3 possible explanations for what you remember: Google search will return results that match the

I believe it's always been the case that quotes work. Here are 3 possible explanations for what you remember: Google search will return results that match the quoted query only through invisible text. So you you might get a result that seems to not contain your text, but if you check the source code or the DOM, the text will be there, hidden. When checking for equality, search will ignore certain punctuation and HTML. So your text might not be there exactly, but once punctuation is stripped, it's there. In the time between Google crawling the page and you viewing it, the page may have been edited. That SO example may be a case of the 2nd reason. For example a page saying <title>Map Accuracy</title> <p>Map accuracy is a measure of... technically contains the text "accuracy map" once you strip out HTML and normalize whitespace and case.