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

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

#91

Post by jamal-kumar »

lghh wrote: post #60
TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Weird question that I have that I'd love anyone who makes a Kagi account to trial after reading the parent comment to answer: When you make your account, you're given the option to customize. When you do, you can pick things like color theme and how URLs are displayed. On the right hand side of the page there is a preview of what your Kagi searches will look like. In my example, the demo Kagi search is Magic The Gath…

I'm kind of blown away by how popular that game has gotten over the past few years in North America. I think the pandemic really accelerated the popularity of that and D&D, people are still doing these things after all of that. Even saw someone playing over the phone the other day. I don't seem to remember it being so popular but now it's more than ever and hardly a surprise tbh

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

#93

Post by tivert »

sneak wrote: post #14

You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

> You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

I actually use that, but it has its faults. You get more spam results and iffy sites (e.g. Wikipedia clones). It's also missing some of Google's convenient features (like doing unit conversions and arithmetic).

IIRC, Verbatim mode is closer to the raw results of Google's underlying search engine, before some of the massaging they do. Some of that massaging is bad, but some of it's all right.

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

#94

Post by gniv »

mannykannot wrote: post #51
sneak wrote: post #14

You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

For now, this seems to work: https://www.google.com/advanced_search but, given the pace at which Google "improves" things, I don't have much hope that it will last.

That page has been there forever. Here's the version from Dec 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20001202041000/https://www.googl...

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

#95

Post by chankstein38 »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #65
sneak wrote: post #14

You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

Why would they make their very expected functionality something you have to dig around to find now? That just seems like really bad decision making that should have been spotted by someone on top and screams that the people on top are now disconnected from reality. I swear that it used to work for certain strings I'm trying to find now which I was able to find information on and now it isn't even returning, with "ver…

Yeah, it's Google. I feel like, at this point, Google is basically synonymous with "bad decision"

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

#96

Post by janlukacs »

dihydro wrote: post #57
robertlagrant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's a good tip.

Here's a URL Link to the advanced search: https://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en&fg=1

wow, thanks! how did you find this link? I don't see it anywhere in the main interface.

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

#97

Post by chankstein38 »

tda wrote: post #50
sneak wrote: post #14

You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

Great tip! Seems like this adds the query param "&tbs=li%3A1", so this might be something you can configure as an extra search engine in firefox. But then I am a happy kagi customer, and I was just thinking that I can't recall the last time I had to do a !g to find something. For me, google search si pretty much dead. I only use it now when on someone else's pc

Sounds like a good case for an extension even! "Auto add this when I go to google"

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

#98

Post by delboni »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #18

Kagi. Never have I been so happy to send someone $10 every month. When you become the customer, not the product, it’s amazing what can happen.

Does anyone knows how Kagi performs on country specific search or even search in another languages?

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

#99

Post by chankstein38 »

yegg wrote: post #23
mkl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duck Duck Go has similar problems for me. It's also recently started sometimes ignoring the "-" when you try to exclude a word.

We put out a partial fix for that recently and a more complete fix is forthcoming.

It's crazy how often you're in the comments of HN articles just waiting for a DDG shoutout haha it's appreciated!

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

#100

Post by crazygringo »

sneak wrote: post #14

You have to use a special "verbatim" search product from Google, it isn't the main search box anymore. Look under Advanced or something.

First of all, wow. It's there (under Tools, you don't even need to go to Advanced), it works, and yet I've never once seen anybody talk about that feature's existence on HN until now. And people have been complaining about not being able to do verbatim searches for years and years here on HN.

Second, I just looked up when this feature was introduced (assuming it was fairly new), and it was in... November 2011. It's been there for the past twelve years. See:

https://www.wired.com/2011/11/google-verbatim-search-back/

https://searchengineland.com/responding-to-complaints-google...

https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2011/11/18/google-introduc...

Thanks for letting us know! It's been right under our noses the whole time -- and it's not like the Tools menu is even particularly hidden, at least on desktop.

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