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If you want to search for a specific string, force it by putting quotes around it, e.g. "376718578383"
by cromwellian 13y ago
If you want to search for a specific string, force it by putting quotes around it, e.g. "376718578383"
- ecuzzillo 13y agoIt often gets completely ignored.
- shamshiel 13y agoYup, there have been plenty of times I've put quotes around my search terms and Google decided I didn't really mean to put quotes around them.
- nimble 13y agoWhat do you think Google should do with the following search: Who said, "To hair is human?"
- mkr-hn 13y agoI would want Google to leave it alone and suggest what it thinks is correct as an option, like it used to.
- chimeracoder 13y agoWow. I was definitely not expecting this: http://i.imgur.com/9Zpqota.png http://i.imgur.com/9Zpqota.png Thanks for pointing that out.
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoThat's a massive fail for Google IMO. Why isn't it matching phrases for the search recommendation? Surely "to err is human" popularised by Pope [a million plus results] should be suggested before "to heir is human" (a minor computer game) [60k results].
- nl 13y agoInteresting! "heir" is a much closer match for "hair" in terms of Levenshtein distance[1] (which indicates a typing error) and soundex[2] (misheard). But clearly "to err is human" should be offered as a possibility too. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex
- eitland 13y agoI summarized the madness a while ago. I think today the situation is somewhat better but here it is: http://techinorg.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-is-going-on-with-search-results.html http://techinorg.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-is-going-on-with-... @nimble: what about when you intentionally search for a misspelling?
- JTon 13y agoI only recall it being ignored when the string in quotes returns no hits
- adanto6840 13y agoI get a lot of "Showing results for X instead" when searching for model numbers or similar. Usually you can click "search for {what I actually typed}" but it's still annoying. I liked it when +'s and double-quotes consistently did the same thing every time. Maybe there is a setting that does this still? I've tried playing with a few settings but have had mixed results / consistency...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- moultano 13y agoIf that happens it's a bug, and I'd love to have some examples to pass along. I'll make sure they get to the right people. Looking through your search history: https://history.google.com/history/ https://history.google.com/history/ might help you find them.
- ecuzzillo 13y agoUnrelatedly terrible results: https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+ros+pcl+download+hangs+forever&oq=mac+ros+pcl+downlo&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j69i60l3j69i59j0.5635j0&sourceid=chrome&espvd=210&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+ros+pcl+download+hangs+f...
- moultano 13y agoAre these results better? https://www.google.com/search?q=ros+pcl+download+hangs+mac https://www.google.com/search?q=ros+pcl+download+hangs+mac
- lbenes 13y agoI really miss the + operator in Google searches. Back when Google disabled it to make their Google+ easier to search for, someone posted some good examples of where " " fails to reproduce the + search behavior.
- rcavezza 13y agoIs that different from using a capital "AND"?
- sp332 13y agoCompletely different. It's a unitary literal operator, so if you put +shelf you would only get pages that had the word "shelf" and not shelved, shelving, bookcase, etc like you get normally.
- cynwoody 13y agoI thought they got rid of the + operator a couple of years ago, recommending instead that you surround the formerly plussed word with quotes or use the Verbatim option under Search Tools. However, I just tried a search for "anagram +python" and got 67 results vs 139,000 without the plus-sign. Does that mean they quietly restored the operator?
- criley2 13y agoI haven't tried the "+" operator in a while but I know the "-" operator has continued to work. I always use it to filter out commercial or store results when a query triggers some over-zealous SEO and throws up pages of junk. A quick "-buy" or "-store" usually cleans the results up.
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoI find now that the minus operator doesn't work half the time either. Google results are getting worse and worse IMO and there don't appear to be any tools left in the available query language to rectify it.
- bfish510 13y agoalso use - and + to force or remove certain results. (You can use this to limit areas of a website for example)
- angersock 13y agoYou're making me miss alta-vista. :(
- curveship 13y ago- still works, but they removed + a couple (few?) years ago. Instead, they recommend you put the single term in quotes, so a search for 'linux +powerpc' would now be 'linux "powerpc"'.
- cynwoody 13y agoThat, and they also have the Verbatim option under Search Tools, but using it seems to conflict with other Tools, such as date filtering, and also applies to the whole query, not just one or two terms.
- cromwellian 13y agoWhy was this voted down? It is the correct answer for searching for serial numbers, for example an Adobe Photoshop serial number: "1325-1576-6224-7891-3222-6645"
- Florin_Andrei 13y agoThey've been messing with operators so much, I've lost track what works and what doesn't. Apparently the double-quote still works. Well, that's good.
- 6ren 13y agoAll is not lost! If you try their sample question, with quotes, it only turns up 4 results - with the article on top. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=“Which+is+better+for+me+—+olive+oil+or+butter%3F” https://www.google.com.au/search?q=“Which+is+better+for+me+—... But it seems inevitable that as google targets what most people mean, they will target less what niche people mean (us). They could do both, with explicit operators etc, but would double their indices, and not worth it (for them). :( At least it creates opportunity for the google-usurper.
- Amadou 13y agoDouble-quote is "sort of literal" (google will perform automatic stemming on single words in double quotes, but not on phrases) if you want really, really literal use "intext:" or "allintext:"
- contingencies 13y agoGood tip.
- celwell 13y agoyou can vote down on yc?
- porso9 13y agoYeah, people really need to know how to google effectively. You can also add "-" before a word to cut out results with that word. (example: "cats -dogs" will return searches with cats but take out ones that also include dogs.) Then there's "file:" and a file extension name to find searches of that filetype. (example: "AP biology file:ppt" returns all ap biology related powerpoints. Next there's "site:" and a website. (Example: "site:reddit.com fedoras" searches for fedoras on reddit, a very common thing. Useful if a site's search engine sucks.)
- the_watcher 13y agosite: is one of the more useful search operators I've discovered. It's almost always better than a site search button for me.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cynwoody 13y agoIn my experience, as a rule, site search engines generally suck. And the exceptions to the rule often turn out to be farming the search out to Google one way or another.[1][2] I often simply ignore site search boxes in favor of using the "site:" operator. [1]https://www.google.com/cse/ https://www.google.com/cse/ [2]http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/products/gsa.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/products/gsa.html
- ivanbrussik 13y agois file: different than filetype:
- eieio 13y agofile: doesn't appear to be a documented command, while filetype is [1] Searching for a few random queries with either "file:pdf" or "filetype:pdf" shows that both return pdfs, but the results that I get are different. Not sure what to make of that or which is better. [1] http://www.googleguide.com/using_advanced_operators.html http://www.googleguide.com/using_advanced_operators.html
- ben0x539 13y agoI think the intention isn't for searching for literally that sequence of words, though, just something approximate-ish question-ish.
- reeddavid 13y agoGoogle often ignores quotes. I've had success using "intext:someword" (without quotes) to force Google to only return results that include someword.
- photorized 13y agoLoose matching = more revenue.
- SeanDav 13y agoQuotes can help but they are often ignored.
- photorized 13y agoThat doesn't always result in strict string matching with Google.