Re:Is it time to stop trusting Google search?
by wonderous on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:25AM
(#15676470)
Appears you’re wrong about which of the search operators are currently supported by Google:
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
The + operator was retired when Google+ was launched, because + was needed as a searchable character rather than an operator.
Re:Is it time to stop trusting Google search?
by muxator on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:07AM
(#15676392)
Really? Naively, I was still continuing to put my "queries in quotes" and using + and - to refine my search.
When did it stopped being supported?
Re:Is it time to stop trusting Google search?
by johndoe489 on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:16AM
(#15676440)
My bad. I could swear it was removed at some point but I can't find articles.
A quick test reveals maybe the change is that you can't do an exact "ascii" search, ie. google searches for an exact sequence of words, but the casing may be different , there-may-be-dashes and so on.
Re:Is it time to stop trusting Google search?
by redtuesday on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:33AM
(#15676507)
To use the plus sign like behaviour you now need to use quotes (since 2011). Instead of:
mars +landings +failures
mars “landings” “failures”
Re:Is it time to stop trusting Google search?
by brians on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:17AM
(#15676443)
When Google Plus was big. 2011?
Quotes still work, and also have an effect like +
Re:Is it time to stop trusting Google search?
by brazzledazzle on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:37AM
(#15676523)
There's been so many times that old results have saved my bacon. I like that they give me everything and allow me to make the decision to narrow it down as needed. Sure, it can be annoying when you're searching for results that are relevant for recent versions of software or libraries but even in those situations old results can be great because they lead to solutions that are still applicable or relevant GitHub issues that lead you where you want to go.
That said, it would be nice if it wasn't buried and was exposed as a slider but I'll take what they're giving.
For me the biggest disappointment is when they turned off the ability to search for "an exact match within quotes", as well as the ability to use +plus and -minus to refine results. (EDIT: could be wrong about that, I thought it was disabled at some point)
But the most dumbfounding is the fact that you still get several year old results whenever you search for a bug, hardware/driver issue, or even simple programming questions related to a not too old framework or API. Every time I have to go into the advanced options to restrict the results to one year, or one month.. you'd think they would make recent activity the default and then let the user know they can "search older results".