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A comment on Google Memory Loss. Parent comment

Re:Google Memory Loss by nostromo on Monday January 15, 2018 @09:39PM (#16155369)
Searching using “Verbatim” can be helpful.

What’s particularly infuriating is when searching with verbatim still ignores keywords.

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Re:Google Memory Loss by colordrops on Monday January 15, 2018 @09:45PM (#16155394)
I still remember the day that stopped working. I decided that was the day Google died.
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Re:Google Memory Loss by Baeocystin on Monday January 15, 2018 @10:35PM (#16155605)
Is that when the + command was overridden in search to refer to G+ instead of 'this is a mandatory search item'?

I am still shocked they ever thought that was a good idea, or that surrounding quotes was an acceptable replacement.

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Re:Google Memory Loss by cma on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @12:13AM (#16155996)
No, when that was changed you could at that time just quote a single word to get the old +word behavior.
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Re:Google Memory Loss by therein on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:45AM (#16156293)
Years ago when I interviewed for a Software Engineer position at Google, the person I was matched to eat lunch with between the interviews was from the Search team.

I asked him these exact questions. He said, the last time he checked, quoting a single word to mark it mandatory worked for him and that he definitely would know if it didn't.

I didn't insist much at the time but I knew he didn't know what he was talking about, and it made me lose hope that this feature would ever come back working like it used to.

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Re:Google Memory Loss by Chriky on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @02:58AM (#16156520)
Are you saying the quote-a-single-word thing doesn't work for you?
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Re:Google Memory Loss by Baeocystin on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @04:54AM (#16156965)
It has not been a guarantee for several years, now. At best it seems to be a slightly firmer suggestion.
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Re:Google Memory Loss by Chriky on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @05:45AM (#16157210)
Do you have some example searches?

I believe you, just never seen it myself. Perhaps I switched some obscure setting on years ago.

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Re:Google Memory Loss by Baeocystin on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @06:12AM (#16157350)
None that are guarantees, unfortunately. It's maddeningly inconsistent from day to day. But it isn't that rare, either. I only perform 10~20 searches using the quote feature a day, and I hit a case where it's ignored several times a week.
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Re:Google Memory Loss by timcederman on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:26AM (#16156608)
Doesn't work consistently for me.
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Re:Google Memory Loss by eitland on Monday January 15, 2018 @10:51PM (#16155666)
I've reported that at least once.

After that it started working again for me within a couple of days and has been more or less working as expected (hmmm. That's what I thought at least) until recently.

Frustratingly they refuse to send any feedback so I just had to try again,

Yes, and I've also gotten the capchas.

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Re:Google Memory Loss by aschampion on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @02:03AM (#16156349)
What more infuriating is it using synonyms of "verbatim" that actually don't mean the same thing as verbatim in a particular technical context but match an avalanche of noise. I've yet to find a way to turn on synonym matching.
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