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Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

insidesearch.blogspot.com

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Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#21

Post by Matt_Cutts »

_pghu wrote: post #5

And, of course, the "search for what I actually fucking typed" mode is completely undiscoverable, hidden behind another click, and which can't be defaulted into. This is a good bandaid, but is still a bandaid. I have still switched away from Google to a search engine that will actually search for what I told it to, not one that thinks it can guess my meaning. (Not to mention one that doesn't wrap all the outgoing URL…

For the vast majority of users, things like spelling correction are a huge help. Roughly 10% of all queries are misspelled. Switching the default to "search for exactly what I typed" would hurt those users and lead to more spam and malware for the average user.

We try to find the balance that helps users the most, and searching for a term with "term" or the literal mode provides an escape hatch for power users.

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#22

Post by rickmb »

Does anybody else feel somewhat uncomfortable to live in a world where people who a) know how to spell and b) actually want a search engine to search what they are looking for are considered "edge cases/power users"?

I've always laughed at the idea of the internet and search engines making people dumber, but this seems like hard evidence. Most Google users are too stupid to have ever been able to use a library...

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#23

Post by joebadmo »

It's encouraging to me that Google takes users' concerns into consideration. I prefer this dialogue to Google just 'getting things right in the first place' in fact. This is one example. Gmail's redesign is another. And I'm sure more changes are coming to both. I hope Google never stops making aggressive changes and listening to feedback aggressively.

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#24

Post by 101000101 »

Today's 0.5% is tomorrows 95.5%. It just takes time.

It is the so-called power users who lead the way for everyone else.

Doing away with a traditional boolean operator for the sake of marketing (of a copycat "social network" website no less) is not the sign of a company with a clear, intelligent vision.

But time will tell who is the wiser.

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#25

Post by smackfu »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #21
_pghu wrote: post #5

And, of course, the "search for what I actually fucking typed" mode is completely undiscoverable, hidden behind another click, and which can't be defaulted into. This is a good bandaid, but is still a bandaid. I have still switched away from Google to a search engine that will actually search for what I told it to, not one that thinks it can guess my meaning. (Not to mention one that doesn't wrap all the outgoing URL…

For the vast majority of users, things like spelling correction are a huge help. Roughly 10% of all queries are misspelled. Switching the default to "search for exactly what I typed" would hurt those users and lead to more spam and malware for the average user. We try to find the balance that helps users the most, and searching for a term with "term" or the literal mode provides an escape hatch for power users.

If only Google had some sort of "account" system that could store user-specific preferences...

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#27

Post by timtadh »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #21
_pghu wrote: post #5

And, of course, the "search for what I actually fucking typed" mode is completely undiscoverable, hidden behind another click, and which can't be defaulted into. This is a good bandaid, but is still a bandaid. I have still switched away from Google to a search engine that will actually search for what I told it to, not one that thinks it can guess my meaning. (Not to mention one that doesn't wrap all the outgoing URL…

For the vast majority of users, things like spelling correction are a huge help. Roughly 10% of all queries are misspelled. Switching the default to "search for exactly what I typed" would hurt those users and lead to more spam and malware for the average user. We try to find the balance that helps users the most, and searching for a term with "term" or the literal mode provides an escape hatch for power users.

How do you tell the difference (for mis-spelled words) between people doing an actual search and people spell checking a word? It could be that a significant percentage of the 10% are not "search queries" but "spelling queries"

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#29

Post by Sargis »

smackfu wrote: post #25
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the vast majority of users, things like spelling correction are a huge help. Roughly 10% of all queries are misspelled. Switching the default to "search for exactly what I typed" would hurt those users and lead to more spam and malware for the average user. We try to find the balance that helps users the most, and searching for a term with "term" or the literal mode provides an escape hatch for power users.

If only Google had some sort of "account" system that could store user-specific preferences...

It'd be better if we could just append a "v" after the URL to make verbatim searches. That way we can bookmark it and there will be no need to be logged in.

Re: Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

#30

Post by botker »

brador wrote: post #10
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #2

I know that a lot of people were sad that we switched from +word to "word" to do an exact match for a word. The good news is that we're rolling out a "literal mode" that will search for exactly the words you typed. It does a verbatim match with your words, so it turns off things like spelling corrections, stemming, synonyms, optionalized terms, and so on. I think we saw multiple proposals for this on Hacker News, so…

This isn't really the solution we were looking for Matt. Can we replace the + operator with something else? How about¬? We don't use that very often to the point I don't even know what it's called, but it's there on the keyboard in one keypress.

That's the symbol for logical negation, which would make it a confusing replacement for +.
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