I take it you work for Google.

I have the impression that Google likes to collect data. If you are indeed interested in fixing the recent quality dip of your search product, example queries where plus (now quotes) are necessary can be automatically collected by inspecting all searches where quotes are included.

If these are too many, filter by those that had a recent similar search without quotes. I doubt this is necessary, though. Who puts quotes in their search string the first time?

If I worked at Google, I'd be interested in the growth of use of the plus-operator lately. It has become a necessity for nearly all technical searches I do. Make a chart of it. Show it to the people in charge of this recent trend. Google search has seriously gotten worse. Forcing quotes instead of plus highlights this problem because it's twice the work.

We've looked at data like this. I'm trying to get examples from the community to supplement it. Looking at aggregate statistics isn't a great way to measure what's bothering power users.

I've saved a few searches where autocorrect gets too aggressive. I've run in to more than this but I don't save all since usually I just want results for my search immediately and don't feel like recording them:

I needed `+pyinotify` on this one to get the results I requested. I've come across this problem with quite a few other python packages but I can't recall them at the moment.:

    Search:  pyinotify thread
    Result:  Aggressive correction; wrong
    `Showing results for inotify thread. Search instead for pyinotify thread`

This one isn't exactly related but automatically changing negated terms is frustrating:

    Search:  win 7 processor not +downclocking -gpu
    Result:  bad autocorrect
    """
    Showing results for win 7 processor not +downclocking -cpu.
    Search instead for win 7 processor not +downclocking -gpu.
    """

Ok. Got it.

An example for you: "libtelldus no symbols" gives me three absolutely unrelated results for my top hits, confusing me enough not to register the following five related hits.

Here are two examples I ran into:

- "isomac logo kerning" (w/o quotes). I wanted to know if someone had specifically written about the kerning of the logo for the company ISOMAC (it's horrible, by the way). I got a very general search for "logo kerning" instead -- I had to put "isomac" in quotes.

- "hvordan bli kvitt olje" (w/o quotes, in Norwegian). The three first words are "how to get rid of" and the last one is "oil". Again, I got a very general search for how to get rid of stuff -- oil was omitted. (I rarely search in Norwegian, so this isn't a big one, but it shows the same pattern)

Thanks!

Here's an example I just ran into:

I want to search for Ubuntu's go-compiler package.

But if I search for "go-compiler" (with or without quotes) I get a bunch of hits for "Go compiler", with my dash turned into a space. That's a bunch of hits I don't want, and now I have to go wading. None of the top 10 hits are about what I asked for.

To me, the + operator meant "I know what I'm doing and please turn off the fuzzy help".

So how does one turn off fuzzy searching now?

intext:go-compiler does not help.

Dammit, sometimes dashes have meaning.

That isn't something new. Punctuation had always been ignored, + operator or not. (With some few exceptions like C++.)