Yup, there have been plenty of times I've put quotes around my search terms and Google decided I didn't really mean to put quotes around them.

What do you think Google should do with the following search:

   Who said, "To hair is human?"

I would want Google to leave it alone and suggest what it thinks is correct as an option, like it used to.

I'd rather see:

  exact: Who said, "To hair is human?"

Quotes are too easy to be used accidentally by laymen.

Shift+2 just slips in their typing without any intention?

I summarized the madness a while ago. I think today the situation is somewhat better but here it is: http://techinorg.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-is-going-on-with-...

@nimble: what about when you intentionally search for a misspelling?

Wow. I was definitely not expecting this: http://i.imgur.com/9Zpqota.png

Thanks for pointing that out.

That's a massive fail for Google IMO. Why isn't it matching phrases for the search recommendation? Surely "to err is human" popularised by Pope [a million plus results] should be suggested before "to heir is human" (a minor computer game) [60k results].

Interesting!

"heir" is a much closer match for "hair" in terms of Levenshtein distance[1] (which indicates a typing error) and soundex[2] (misheard). But clearly "to err is human" should be offered as a possibility too.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex

I only recall it being ignored when the string in quotes returns no hits

I get a lot of "Showing results for X instead" when searching for model numbers or similar.

Usually you can click "search for {what I actually typed}" but it's still annoying. I liked it when +'s and double-quotes consistently did the same thing every time.

Maybe there is a setting that does this still? I've tried playing with a few settings but have had mixed results / consistency...

If that happens it's a bug, and I'd love to have some examples to pass along. I'll make sure they get to the right people. Looking through your search history: https://history.google.com/history/ might help you find them.

Unrelatedly terrible results: https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+ros+pcl+download+hangs+f...

Are these results better? https://www.google.com/search?q=ros+pcl+download+hangs+mac

Yes, of course, but I and everybody I talk to find it incredibly obnoxious that it ignores the space.

I just wanted to confirm so I could document the issue properly. I wasn't sure what the original query was looking for. Thanks for reporting it.