If you're an advanced Google searcher, then you're likely to be familiar with the plus operator. If you're not, here's the quick explanation:
Google rewrites search queries, in order to try to deliver you the correct results, and to help searchers who struggle to come up with the correct syntax for a successful searches. Perhaps the most common example is for mis-spellings:
Google automatically changes the search results to reflect what the user likely "meant" to search for. And it usually does a reasonable job. As Eric Schmidt once said, "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about". So, they know well enough that you can't spell. Other examples that are not obvious mistakes are when Google has a high confidence that the user is looking for something else, probably based on aggregated behaviour and other analytics:
This is all well and good. However, if you're a precise searcher and know what you're doing, then this behaviour is very frustrating. For me, it is by far the biggest annoyance with Google search (well, perhaps Google Instant is also in the running).How can I found Mr Steven Wonder without multiple clicks? Historically, the easiest workaround has been to use the plus operator. Put simply, you put a plus symbol in front of any word you don't want Google to rewrite.
Alas, this appears to be being phased out by Google:
So now, we have to use double quotation marks. Arg! A few years ago, Google also supported skipping the closing quotation mark, but this no longer works either.
In these days of energy saving, that's a lot of extra keypresses for me! OK, I know I'm not a typical Google searcher, but it would be nice if Google kept an amount of convenience for those who like a more advanced syntax. The plus on the numberpad is an easy press. Shift + 2 every time I want to avoid Google second guessing me (several times an hour) is a step too far!
More seriously, over time, Google has become less and less precise, and supported advanced features less and less, which is a shame. Worse still, there are already reports that certain searches are now impossible to obtain good results for. It is possible to use the nfpr=1 parameter in search URLs to avoid some rewriting behaviour - but this doesn't prevent many of the behind the scenes rewrites.
It would be nice to have a large, quick search engine that had good features for the more technical amongst us. But where is it? Suggestions welcome :)
Comments
Glad to see I'm not alone…
I don't really mind the ditching of the + operator, at least now I won't be wondering whether I should use quotes or plus anymore. As far as I can remember they had slightly different meanings but in practice they do the same.
But I agree that Google is steadily becoming more annoying because it is trying to cater to the non-savvy user. The fuzziness of the results will sometimes give funny situations but it quickly becomes very annoying if I have to carefully craft each search query to get anything near useful.
Google is becoming more like Microsoft, who also believe they can write software that knows exactly what you want to do (“hey, it looks like you're writing a letter!”) If they continue like this, they may become ‘evil’ before they even realize it.
Eroding of quality
Thanks for the reply, DrLex. For me, as a precise searcher, the lack of precision erodes result quality. As you say, it's "very annoying if I have to carefully craft each search query to get anything near useful".
And that leads to the other factor: speed. What I want from search is precision, speed and reach. I want the exact results I search for, immediately. The big advantage for me with the plus is type it and no rewritten or additional clicks are necessary. But quotes don't work that way, because they are not as strong a sign as the plus symbol was.
If you take this search:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22who+is+steven+wonder%22
I now require an extra click to prevent rewriting. And those clicks will add up!
The only workaround I know of is to use &nfpr=1 in URLs, which requires me to manually fix search boxes and so on, which is another annoyance, since the number of devices and machines I search from make it impossible to do everywhere.
Perhaps if we push the energy saving/environmental angle, Google will give us an "I know what I'm searching for" checkbox :)
Other than that, there are nice engines like Exalead, but none of them "get" that result speed is paramount for power users. We notice those fractions of a second and, again, they add up pretty quickly.
I can't begin to say how much
I can't begin to say how much I am disappointed that they removed the plus operator. double quotations marks take triple the time and doesn't seem to do exactly the same thing as +
Google, have you been
Google, have you been drinking?
It eludes me how
-no "yes"
is more comprehensible than
-no +yes
And as much as I dislike Microsoft, I see Bling doesn't do this to their users.
I'd pay for a search engine that allowed regexp searches
What I would really like is to be able to search with regular expressions. Yes, I realize that would likely require a redesign of the way the search index is stored, and would be vastly more computationally-intensive. Hence the subscription fee.
Think about it: a search database as vast as Google's or Bing's that one can search with all the fancy operators geeks are used to on a command line. Returning abbreviated results after a fixed amount of processing time (say, one second) would be fine. And I'd be willing to pay for it. Heftily.
Anyone want to form a startup?
This change doesn't really
This change doesn't really make sense to me, the only real reason I can think of that it's easier to search for "Google+". Tip for lazy people, for now you can just do a standard + search then click on their example of the search in quotation marks.
Like that other guy said, it is a step backwards to go from + and -, to "" and -
I used the plus sign with
I used the plus sign with multiple keywords and in front of multiple words surrounded by quotes for phrases. This is to make sure that any results coming back must have that keyword or phrase!
FFS google!
You just became highly irrelevant to me!
Source code search
@Joshua McGee - another feature I've always wanted is source code search - the combination of regex and plus searching for anything in code would be a killer feature. Not an easy one to achieve, though!
Google needs a preference setting: MATCH WHAT I SAY
Google just gets worse and worse.
It tries to guess what I “might” want… instead of just giving me EXACTLY what I asked for.
Why do you think I *SPECIFICALLY* searched for certain terms… just to have google totally ignore them?
The old google worked 100%. I type in what *I* want… it immediately found it.
Now it just returns 1000000s of useless matches that have NOTHING to do with my search string.
Not an easy one to achieve, though???
> Not an easy one to achieve, though!
Why would using RegEx be hard????
It's a simple, old, common standard search method.
RegEx
@anon - Regex itself isn't hard - regex searching billions of documents is pretty computationally expensive, and a search engine for power users needs to be very quick!
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