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

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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