Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#1

Post by 7moritz7 » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 11:18 AM UTC

I used this quite frequently but since Google """"improved"""" it last year (there was a popular HN post complaining about this) it doesn't work anymore. Search for a domain name with quotation marks for example just recombines the contents of the domain and returns a bunch of unrelated content completely cluttering what I am looking for. Until last year it used to return no search results if there weren't any exact matches, which is the whole point.

Does someone have a work around for this phenomenal Google decision?

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#2

Post by nogoogs » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 11:54 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#3

Post by cynicalsecurity » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

Huh? It's still working.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#4

Post by planede » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

> Search for a domain name with quotation marks for example just recombines the contents of the domain and returns a bunch of unrelated content completely cluttering what I am looking for.

site:example.com and -site:example.com still work, I think.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#5

Post by jeffbee » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:36 PM UTC

planede wrote: post #4

> Search for a domain name with quotation marks for example just recombines the contents of the domain and returns a bunch of unrelated content completely cluttering what I am looking for. site:example.com and -site:example.com still work, I think.

"example.com" also seems to work perfectly well.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#6

Post by johnwayne666 » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

Have you tried using "Tools -> Verbatim"?

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#7

Post by fergie » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

I agree that as a programmer who frequently needs to search for long literal strings verbatim, Google has become notably less useful than it used to be.

I wonder if there is now a gap in the market for some kind of "literal" search engine that makes no attempt to infer meaning on your search terms and simply gives you the closest results? In other words Google ca 2012.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#8

Post by Raed667 » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:38 PM UTC

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #3

Huh? It's still working.

really depends on the query, I have seen it working and I have seen it being totally ignored.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#9

Post by causi » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:39 PM UTC

The minus (-) operator isn't a hard and fast rule anymore either. It's particularly galling when you want to search for something that's similar to something else that's very common.

Re: Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature?

#10

Post by up_o » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 12:39 PM UTC

For locking to a particular domain I had always added `site: example.com` to the query, rather than adding domain to a double quote statement.

I have used double quotes to limit to a particular _phrase_ as recently as last week. I'm not privy to the improvements you mention, do you have a link?