Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google adds verbatim search mode for your exact search terms

insidesearch.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 168 posts

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

#151

Post by slavak »

redthrowaway wrote: post #96
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…

Still waiting on being able to search for punctuation. Being able to search for "$. ruby" or "$_ perl" or "$: edit: Just realized "$_ perl" actually does work. It would be nice, however, if we could search for these kinds of terms generally and not just in specific case.

This. Half my kingdom for this feature.

One of the biggest problems I have with Google search at the moment is when I need to look up specific functions or symbol names. If I'm looking for documentation on g_find_str, the LAST thing I need is to see results that contain "... are going. Find string is a ..."

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

#152

Post by hessenwolf »

Xuzz wrote: post #11
brador wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not on US keyboards, I don't think.

I've looked all over my German keyboard, with its crazy-assed bracket locations, and I don't see it anywhere.

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

#153

Post by daveungerer »

edanm wrote: post #150
daveungerer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree enough this. I'm pretty sure user interface research has shown that it's incredibly frustrating to users when you tell a computer to do one thing and it does something else. The suggestions are helpful, but it should default to what I tell the fucking thing to search for!

"I'm pretty sure user interface research has shown that it's incredibly frustrating to users when you tell a computer to do one thing and it does something else." You honestly believe that Google is doing something that is worse for the vast majority of their users? That makes the vast majority of their users more frustrated? And that they know this is true because research has proved it? Why would they act like that…

You're putting words in my mouth. Please don't do that.

I think it should be a given that it's frustrating when a computer doesn't do what you tell it. That doesn't mean that the cost of that frustration isn't offset by the added convenience for many users. In my case it isn't, and those (relatively frequent) times when it does frustrate me, I seriously consider switching search engines.

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

#154

Post by edanm »

daveungerer wrote: post #153
edanm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm pretty sure user interface research has shown that it's incredibly frustrating to users when you tell a computer to do one thing and it does something else." You honestly believe that Google is doing something that is worse for the vast majority of their users? That makes the vast majority of their users more frustrated? And that they know this is true because research has proved it? Why would they act like that…

You're putting words in my mouth. Please don't do that. I think it should be a given that it's frustrating when a computer doesn't do what you tell it. That doesn't mean that the cost of that frustration isn't offset by the added convenience for many users. In my case it isn't, and those (relatively frequent) times when it does frustrate me, I seriously consider switching search engines.

"You're putting words in my mouth. Please don't do that."

You're right. I'm sorry.

For the record, most of my comment was addressed to everyone in this thread, not just to you.

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

#155

Post by GraffitiTim »

I just added a custom Google Verbatim search engine to Chrome with keyword "gv", so I can type "gv testing" in the URL bar and get a verbatim search for "testing".

To do this, go to the "Manage Search Engines" section of Chrome preferences (Firefox has a similar feature somewhere) and use this URL:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1

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

#156

Post by anjc »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #147
anjc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ok that makes sense, thanks. I'm just mainly surprised at how little usage there was of the operator to begin with. I use it (used to use it) probably 20+ times a day, and would've assumed that it's common enough, at least in certain circles (academia etc).

Okay, I found the sample data. Lots of stuff like phone numbers: +XXX YYY ZZZZ. Lots of multiple plus searches, like +++++aaaa. Lots of people using + instead of space: aaa+bbb+ccc. Lots of searches with every word having a plus in front of each word: +aaa +bbb +ccc +ddd +eee. Some people surrounding words with plus: aaa +bbb+ ccc. Those were the first things that popped up in a quick glance.

Thanks a million man, so basically it seems like those people weren't actually meaning to use the operator at all. Sure you already parse them out anyway, though. Ah...i wont go on too much, i'm still surprised that so few people used it on purpose! Thanks again

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

#157

Post by wladimir »

dncrane wrote: post #144
redthrowaway wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting on being able to search for punctuation. Being able to search for "$. ruby" or "$_ perl" or "$: edit: Just realized "$_ perl" actually does work. It would be nice, however, if we could search for these kinds of terms generally and not just in specific case.

I launched a search engine that does exactly this just over a week ago, you can see it here: http://symbolhound.com/ I freaked out when I saw this headline and thought it meant google had finally decided to implement this feature a week after my launch.

Great! Nice, simple and easy. It can even search for negative numbers without interpreting the - as "exclude". A literal search engine, without Google's well-meaning "intelligence" can be useful in many cases.

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

#158

Post by bobbles »

hessenwolf wrote: post #152
Xuzz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on US keyboards, I don't think.

I've looked all over my German keyboard, with its crazy-assed bracket locations, and I don't see it anywhere.

My UK keyboard has it left of the '1' key above the qwerty keys

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

#159

Post by walropodes »

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…

Could you guys consider bringing out a case-sensitive search feature sometime?
Post reply on HN