Practically speaking, many non-technical users _do_ want to formulate their query in an imprecise, sloppy manner and have the search engine figure it out.

Programmers are capable of and accustomed to putting a lot of care and precision into exactly how they communicate (especially when communicating with a computer), but regular people don't usually do that. They may not even be capable of it.

The only solution I can see is for a search engine to support both styles of communication. It could either learn/guess (on a per-person or per-query basis) or just let you tell it how to behave.

But yes, Google web search could definitely use improvement here. There are times when there are VERY obvious clues that I'm being precise, and Google totally misses it. For example, my printer is a DCP-L2550DW. If I search for "DCP-L2550DW margins", it will include results that don't have "margins". I could have just typed the model number, but I went out of my way to keep typing. If that's not a strong enough signal that I definitely want results related to margins, I don't know what is.

I think this is due to people more often than not finding the top page useful regardless which just reinforces the link.

But it's super annoying to find you've just waited for a 300mb download of the wrong driver.

In so many cases slightly different product numbers are equivalent and differ in things like the market they are for, or the color, or something else you may or may not care about.

It seems to me that hiding these results required both Google to do mind reading and to decode spec sheets to see if they match what you had in mind.. all from a single string of semi-random characters.

This doesn’t always work exactly but in general if you are looking for exact matches for certain terms, put those terms in quotes.

This is what finally put me on using DDG.

I think what I've noticed with technical searches is that Google tries too hard to "predict" what I am looking for. It always ends up showing me irrelevant (but surely highly ranked) fluff related to prior searches. The thing is, I don't need to see something related to my prior searches. I need to see what I am looking for TODAY. For me the "personalization" is often actively harmful.

> The only solution I can see is for a search engine to support both styles of communication.

Isn't this exactly what you're asking for? Non-technical users can be imprecise and let Google figure it out, while technical or power users can get more precise results with the various search operators?

This seemed to be true at one time, but I noticed last night that it doesn't always work.

These days it seems to put include results without the word, then provide a tiny link below each deficient result with a link to "must include" the missing word in a new search.

That used to be the previous behavior, but now it's inconsistent.

There are also other results [2] that include ‘monkey’ not what I asked for.

It’s infuriating. I just want to grep the internet. Is that too much to ask?

[0] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&ei=P1oH...

[1] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481463016388903842/

[2] https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g55543-d4580159-...

In your second example, the word "monkeys" does appear on the page, in the "Show reviews that mention" section.

More importantly, did you have a result in mind for this query that isn't showing up? It seems somewhat nonsensical.

The Pinterest page perhaps has monkeys at some point, but doesn’t now.

This isn’t a real search, I just added something whimsical (and I miss San Diego burritos). This is behavior I remember but don’t typically track so it’s hard to remember on command.

Note you can use search tools | verbatim and it will return pages will all terms. The Pinterest page is still there, but the trip advisor page is missing [1].

[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/Xlp8lsk [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22monkeys%22+burritos+san+d...

1. It's tiring to type quotes around every word every time.

2. It takes you to the other extreme. Just because I'm being more precise than Google thinks I am doesn't mean if I have 8 words in my query that all of them are mandatory. There is potential for a useful middle ground that quotes don't get me to.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Edit: Actually you could help. Show me where I set "Verbatim" as a permanent option :)

It would be great if Google had some kind of, let’s call it “Code Search” feature that searched all open source repositories.

Come on now...

Seems like dark SEO is winning.

Or maybe I've just grown numb to their presence.

Edit because I can't reply any more: As dsfyu404ed says below, it tends to drop the central term of the query, making the results 100% useless. Not that they're particularly useful even if it doesn't do that...

It's particularly infuriating when it drops the location word from a search query for info on law and regulation.

I don't care if broad form automotive insurance is available in some non-specific state, I care about if it's available in the state that I put in the query.

Edit: Why is this downvoted?

It's lunch hour at Google, and people there are hitting their phones and HN.

You can see a lot of interesting trends on HN by day and time of day. Watch what happens to any story critical of insert nation here after 6am in that nation.

Or notice how on Fridays (NA time), HN is pretty much a ghost town.

But then again, it doesn't seem like a simple problem and one that has companies in either way.

As long as I can force it with quotes, I'm happy. Google has even started suggesting next to the results "include only results with the word XXX", to remind me the quotes might be needed.

I should investigate how to write a search plugin for Firefox that " puts" "every" "word" "in" "quotes"