Google's search has become a piece of poo

It started with searches for x producing results for y (and bunch of other annoying changes that require several more clicks to work around in order to get what you want)

So to fix that you had to do +x to search x

Now even +x finds y instead of x (it says The + operator has been replaced. - but doesn't replace the + with "" 's)

Currently you have to do "x" to search x.

So to search a page containing all the words:

So to search a page like

You have to type "So" "to" "search" "a" "page" "like".

So that's 12 more characters to type to do what's probably the most common type of search.

I read that post twice and I still don't understand it. Plus mixing it search syntax and other special characters for formatting reasons only further adds to the confusion.

Why not just say what you're searching for? Is it top secret?

I know when sometimes I search for music, I need to add:
-lyric -lyrics
..to my search to remove any instances of lyrics websites. For some reason -lyric still brings back results with "lyrics" in it.

If this is the gist of the original post, which I also read twice

I think you used to be able to type +chocolate-chip cookies to get only results with both "chocolate-chip" and "cookies" instead of including results for any cookies.

But now you have to type "chocolate-chip" "cookies".

x=y  didn't you know that.   chocolate chip cookies = speckled flat bread treats

of course.  NOT.

i guess google is trying to be more AI than need be.

Try Bing today.  If you stare at the woodpecker long enough a word bubble with "Why I otta!" pops up when the bug flys by his head. 

I use Bing, so, I don't know exactly the problem. But, wouldn't it say, "are you also looking for B? Or you only want A?". And then, just press A if you don't want to have B.

1 hour ago, davewill wrote

x=y  didn't you know that.   chocolate chip cookies = speckled flat bread treats

of course.  NOT.

i guess google is trying to be more AI than need be.

Try Bing today.  If you stare at the woodpecker long enough a word bubble with "Why I otta!" pops up when the bug flys by his head. 

I hate you. I wasted 5 minutes staring at that damn bird. 

4 minutes ago, cbae wrote

*snip*

I hate you. I wasted 5 minutes staring at that damn bird. 

That is indeed hypnotizing.

@spivonious: I'm glad atleast someone understands what I write.

And years ago you didn't really have to add the + as much to get the exact match results. Google is substituting the search pattern for what it deems best quite a bit now and since I search for obscure technical things a lot where there's just <30 real results, every search takes now more steps than before as Google thinks I want something that produces 100000 results with lots of SEO spam.

While in Chrome search for 'Do a barrel roll' in Google search.

@mikexkearney: Or 'tilt'

Herbie

Search for
"failfield 3"

gives:
Showing results for "fairfield 3"
Search instead for "failfield 3"


Same for +"failfield 3" (not surprising, given how they removed the + operator).

Why does it suggest r in place of l? Is there a keyboard layout where those two letters are located next to each other?

Looking at the URL, it appends &nfpr=1 to the correct query.

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861

The + operator has been replaced. To search for an exact word or phrase, use double quotation marks. ... By putting double quotes around a single word, you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it.

As you can see, Google's own documentation is incorrect, given results above.

Further, people are saying that "" searches won't produce same results at + before but I can't verify this...

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=02c6ec0718868dbc&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=6eb38b9a68950567&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=6eb38b9a68950567&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=757646c11da8b552&hl=en

etc, there's ton more of complaint threads about same issue if you can bother to look.

Another annoying thing is that while status bar shows the link when hovering over it, the javascript prevents copying the link (instead giving you a link to google forwarder url). And if you disable javascript then sites that use javascript from google.com stop working. I didn't even mention hiding the cache link behind the preview. Until now. In other words, it's hard to see how someone could be thrilled about these "improvements"...

You can look at the above topics to find that the problems are even worse in non-US languages, where it was often necessary to use + (exact match) to get the right result.

BING appears to now have the edge over Google having copied these features. I'll keep closer watch on whether Bing has caught up on the actual results, particularly prioritizing various databases results to top of the results. (Which is really REALLY important, since the search of those databases, forums etc from their own page is really slow or otherwise useless)

@androidi:

but but but, Google Search is what people want.

I just want them to fix the backspace button, damn them.

Wthout the plus symbol the result was OR

eg Apples Pears

I'm looking for a page containing the word Apples or Pears (which also includes both)

With the plus symbol the was AND

eg +Apples +Pears

I'm looking for a page containing both words Apples and Pears,  and exclude any page that has one one of them.

Double quotes was for exact spelling, useful for when the word or phrase contains a space.

eg "Starship Enterprise"

So how do you now, do the different type of searches.