Putting an "word" in "quotes" is the inline way of exactly matching an individual word. It's conceptually similar to putting a phrase in "quotation marks," so p

Putting an "word" in "quotes" is the inline way of exactly matching an individual word. It's conceptually similar to putting a phrase in "quotation marks," so personally I think it makes sense that we have one operator for literal searches. > A + could apply to a single word or to a single phrase I don't think a + could apply to a phrase. That was one problem with the + operator; it was not clear to users how it actually worked. In fact, though there were many searches whose results were helped by their use of + (many of whom made by users who are commenting here on HN), there were many searches whose results were largely made worse by their use of +, whether it was inadvertent or overzealously applied.