Completely different. It's a unitary literal operator, so if you put +shelf you would only get pages that had the word "shelf" and not shelved, shelving, bookcase, etc like you get normally.

I thought they got rid of the + operator a couple of years ago, recommending instead that you surround the formerly plussed word with quotes or use the Verbatim option under Search Tools.

However, I just tried a search for "anagram +python" and got 67 results vs 139,000 without the plus-sign. Does that mean they quietly restored the operator?

I haven't tried the "+" operator in a while but I know the "-" operator has continued to work.

I always use it to filter out commercial or store results when a query triggers some over-zealous SEO and throws up pages of junk. A quick "-buy" or "-store" usually cleans the results up.

I find now that the minus operator doesn't work half the time either.

Google results are getting worse and worse IMO and there don't appear to be any tools left in the available query language to rectify it.

> Google results are getting worse and worse IMO

They're optimising for normal people who don't formulate query strings in Google, but they ask questions or just search.

> I find now that the minus operator doesn't work half the time either.

I honestly suspect Google is A/B testing search results somehow.

I honestly suspect no power users or technical users are included in A/B testing, or if they are, they're a realistic minority whom does not have changes made for them....

Looking at Google's Search Operators page,† I see an OR, but no AND. I thought AND'ing was the default.

†https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/136861?hl=en