Seriously, though: these are signals that the inmates are running the asylum and it's time to find alternative providers. There are other ways to search.
For me it doesn't, and it violates the Law of Demeter. If there are no results, tell me. Don't make me waste time wondering if any of the results have what I'm looking for, since there is no indication that the results I'm receiving are ancillary. Treating your users like they're idiots is evil.
No matches _is_ a result. I don't go use a search engine because I must click on a link, any link. I go there to find _relevant_ information. If there isn't any, tell me & I can get on with my day.
I see this as part of a big trend towards software and software designers that think they know what you want better than you do, and its an endless source of frustration for me, and im sure many others.
In my somewhat brief testing, current Google is simply inconsistent. Sometimes it allows searches for fully quoted terms, sometimes is fails and warns you, sometimes it fails but not warning you...
Try: "society of spectacles"
Out of desperation, I tried a +, and when that didn't work I sent my first feedback to Google.
I've always had my doubts as to whether they really were found in links.
Now I think about it, Google is most likely doing this intentionally, to get more data for "natural language search" ie, to infer what people might mean by combining the results, then seeing what people click on to validate the technique.
This does mean that intentional input won't work anymore, unless there is a means to turn this semi-semantic search off.
Hmmmm... maybe DuckDuckGo would be a suitable alternative?
Another peeve is that the search box on the results page (with Instant disabled) routinely drops input or moves the insertion point.
Typically breaking backspace, or filling in unwanted trailing information, but often worse.