Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algorithm, “Hummingbird”

Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by criley2 on Thursday September 26, 2013 @03:53PM (#6453198)

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.

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Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by pbhjpbhj on Thursday September 26, 2013 @06:59PM (#6454156)

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.

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Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by madeofpalk on Friday September 27, 2013 @05:16AM (#6456064)

> 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.

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Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by saraid216 on Thursday September 26, 2013 @09:13PM (#6454660)

> 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.

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Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by criley2 on Friday September 27, 2013 @10:49AM (#6457268)

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....

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