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Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by 1qaz2wsx3edc on Thursday September 26, 2013 @06:39PM (#6454076)
I'm going to answer this from a technical point of view. I find search is best done by using precedence.

For example say my question is: "how to use rails with devise and omniauth", I break it down to the group in which I think nets the most results should be the first keyword and so on.

1. rails 2. devise 3. omniauth

rails+devise+omniauth: https://www.google.com/search?q=rails+devise+omniauth

rails+omniauth+devise: https://www.google.com/search?q=rails+omniauth+devise

omniauth+devise+rails: https://www.google.com/search?q=omniauth+devise+rails

how+to+use+rails+with+devise+and+omniauth: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+use+rails+with+devise...

The top results are normally similar. With exception to the "how+to+use+rails+with+devise+and+omniauth" search, which is rather different.

From my standpoint the "rails+devise+omniauth" yields the best results as the source of truth is closer to the github documentation "OmniAuth: Overview · plataformatec/devise Wiki · GitHub", over third party information "#235 Devise and OmniAuth (revised) - RailsCasts".

Using "how+to+use+rails+with+devise+and+omniauth" gets rather off topic after the 3 or so results.

Another tactic I use is searching like a command line. For instance: "wiki list breaking bad", or "imdb iron man". This don't work with smaller properties, so "site:example.com" is another awesome tool.

Just my two cents.

Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by hrkristian on Friday September 27, 2013 @09:53AM (#6456990)
Quotes do not require the plus sign as a placeholder for space, unless I'm missing something. I often use quotes to search for specific Linux error messages with great success; any hit that isn't a direct match gets shafted.