Re:Ask HN: Is it just me or did Google search recently get a...
by natch on Monday February 11, 2019 @05:47AM
(#19133479)
They have definitely messed up in many ways, but having a must-include operator was not one of the ways.
It allows (allowed?) you to tell the search that the other words can be used for ranking and are nice-to-have words, while the must-include words are treated differently and must be present and match exactly.
If all search terms were automatically must-include with no override, search results would be garbage because as a user you aren’t going to predict the perfect inflected forms of words used in documents every time.
Being dumbfounded should not lead you to think other people are wrong. It should lead you to wonder what you are missing.
It allows (allowed?) you to tell the search that the other words can be used for ranking and are nice-to-have words, while the must-include words are treated differently and must be present and match exactly.
If all search terms were automatically must-include with no override, search results would be garbage because as a user you aren’t going to predict the perfect inflected forms of words used in documents every time.
Being dumbfounded should not lead you to think other people are wrong. It should lead you to wonder what you are missing.