DDG does much better with quotes for required/exact matches.
I've found the opposite. DDG will often just ignore my quotes entirely
Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#72I was looking for a specific person recently and searched: Canada I guess they were pretty obscure so Google in all their wisdom displayed the results for Canada, with the entire name struck through. Fantastic. Defaulting to the most generic term in a query to the point of absolute uselessness.
Yep, same thing happening to me... three keywords to define what i need, and it randomly chooses to ignore one of them, and show me irrelevant results. The only worse search is probably on aliexpress, where you search for "red led", get a bunch of red LEDs, then you sort by the number of orders, and the top results are for other random "red" stuff (it seems as if it searches every keyword separately, but I haven't ve…
I once managed to get Google to strike through every keyword and show me just vaguely related things.
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#73I've been looking up exact variable names from various API documentation and getting no relevant results despite these variable names appearing in multiple Stack Overflow posts, the API documentation where I copies the text from and of course GitHub.
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#74"you.com" finds a lot of things the Googopoly doesn't!! It's kinda limited, but it sometimes helps when neigher DDG nor bing does. Not shilling for them, but I tried it and it's not that bad! Lastt couple years, Googopoly scrambled Youtube search results.. The only one way for me to find these is you.com.
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#75No post body was provided.
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#76I really want a search engine that works more like a database. I want to see why it returned the results it did, like an EXPLAIN syntax does for SQL queries. I want fine grain control of the actual query, and ability to sort the results by different facets. I think there’s 100% a market for a new search engine that is geared toward the power user, the researcher. Google hasn’t innovated their actual search engine in…
I won't say this entirely solves the problem for researchers, but several posts here have pointed out that Duck Duck Go gives superior results in this case. I use DDG routinely, and only rarely do I need to go to Google for a search for some esoteric technical things (although I'm not certain Google actually does better).
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#77To see how badly Google results have deteriorated, especially for politicized topics, search for "what countries are using ivermectin" with Google and then do it again with http://Yandex.com . All the Yandex results answer the question. All the Google results are either broken or are pages talking about why ivermectin should not be used.
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#78I totally agree with the consensus here that Google search result quality has declined dramatically, although I think it's been happening for at least 5 years rather than 6-12 months. Two alternates have helped me replace Google.
DuckDuckGo has been mentioned by many others but I'll add my voice as well. It does a much better job at respecting quotes than Google (though not always!). It's very rare these days that I strike out on a search with DDG and have any luck with Google, though it does happen on rare occasions.
The other site is SymbolHound. This is great for programming queries since it actually search symbols verbatim! I found out about it when trying to debug a complicated makefile at a new job, while not being very good at makefiles. Ever tried searching Google for some unfamiliar syntax from a makefile? Hahaha, it doesn't even try to give matching results; it's totally useless.
I miss the old days but these two alternatives, plus falling back to Google, or at least StartPage with `!sp`, still works pretty well.
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It corrected the typo, but it shows you the option to put it back. Click the: Search instead for realsense "failed to recconect" Then you get some very plausible looking results (idk how well they'll solve your problem).
Putting quotes or other search flags and instructions should - as a rule, interpret that literally. Anyone using them wants them to work. The only time it may annoy someone is if they're copying and pasting ... Quotes, as text, from some website? A plurality of quotes on Facebook are images of text. It's just Google's interest to keep you faffing around on their search page longer. There's no other reason - this stuf…
There's a "verbatim" option under search tools for that.
I agree with you that that's what I expect from quotes, but... I really think there are way more Google users who do not expect that. A lot of people think quotation marks are the way you do emphasis in English, for instance!
Re: Tell HN: Google doesn't work anymore for exact matches
#80Google results are low quality unless you enable verbatim. Tools, all results, verbatim. It blows my mind this isn't the default. I can only assume they've adopted the opinion of search engines before them that they could benefit from showing lower quality results to keep the users on their site longer.
Is this something accessible through the Settings, bottom right? I cannot find it.
no, not in Settings. The 'Tools' option only appears at the top right of the screen after you conduct a google search in the normal fashion. So search for a term, then click Tools at top to switch to the verbatim option.