Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operator now “-”?

Posted by kristopolous on Sunday February 07, 2021 @03:38AM
from the ask-hn dept.

Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Yahoo, it seems like all of them have decided to stop honoring the "-". Surround things by quotes, add them multiple times, it doesn't seem to matter.

Are there any decent search engines that do what you actually say left instead of extremely poorly trying to guess what you mean?

( 14 comments | 20 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by matt_heimer on Sunday February 07, 2021 @10:09AM (#26055506)

Google still has it documented on https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433 and there is a none of these words option on https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Make sure you aren't putting the minus symbol in quotes. The quotes are what I see people get wrong. Many people still try to use the + symbol to indicate required but Google disabled that when working on Google+ and switched to quotes to indicate required words or phrases.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by Ulus on Sunday February 07, 2021 @09:08AM (#26055114)

I just did a google search for “league of -legends” (sans quotes) and it didn’t return links to the game.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by kristopolous on Sunday February 07, 2021 @06:34PM (#26059248)

This is absolutely true. I wonder why I always hit the edge cases.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by solus_factor on Sunday February 07, 2021 @03:56AM (#26053671)

Quotes are also pretty much ignored now. I don't know why.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by rozab on Sunday February 07, 2021 @09:52AM (#26055390)

I use this feature all the time. Maybe you're getting A/B tested?

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by kristopolous on Sunday February 07, 2021 @12:43PM (#26056558)

I try to use it all the time. I've done crude things like written browser plugins to sift through results and remove things because the search engines just ignore it.

The worst thing is when I'm trying to remove garbage results so things like "free account" or "need to signup" for a bunch of spam sites. Those things are always ignored.

It's stupid that I need to essentially groom my results with my own code.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by bjourne on Sunday February 07, 2021 @10:53PM (#26060582)

Because negation is incredibly expensive in any information retrieval system. You want all recipes with blue cheese in them? That's easy. You want all recipes with no blue cheese in them? That's a massive number of recipes.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by jobigoud on Monday February 08, 2021 @04:35AM (#26062446)

Still less than all the recipes, which would also be a valid search so I don't think this point stands.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by bjourne on Monday February 08, 2021 @08:32AM (#26064175)

What query do you use to get Google to list all documents in its index?

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by blackcats on Sunday February 07, 2021 @06:51AM (#26054400)

Don’t know, some spam sites show up in my google search like codegrepper. Sticking with queckqueckgo i guess

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by aww_dang on Sunday February 07, 2021 @04:04AM (#26053702)

-"negative keyword"

appears to work for me

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Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by decasteve on Sunday February 07, 2021 @08:54AM (#26055021)

The cynical take:

They'll do what's profitable over what's accurate.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by scrollaway on Sunday February 07, 2021 @10:19AM (#26055579)

This isn't a cynical comment, it's just nonsensical in this context.

It's like replying "it's more profitable this way" to "why are chopsticks popular in asian culture".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why do search engines ignore the exclusion operat... by mxmilkb on Sunday February 07, 2021 @09:24PM (#26060136)

I noticed it's like this on Amazon the other day. It meant I couldn't narrow down results to find what I wanted so I could give Amazon money

[ Parent | on HN ]