News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead by barrkel on Sunday June 22, 2014 @09:17AM (#7927728)
When you say "+ was used correctly in only 1 out of 600 searches", it seems to imply that it was used incorrectly in 599 out of 600 searches. Your phrasing makes too strong a claim as most people understand the language, IMO.

Let's not forget how large an audience any Google feature has, though. + being used correctly, even by 0.33% of users, is still probably a million people.

Re:The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead by e12e on Sunday June 22, 2014 @10:09AM (#7927857)
So, 1 out of every 200 searches contain a "+", possibly for refinement. In 1 out of every three of those searches, the "+" helps the user find what's wanted. No information on a) some users are better at using the "+" correctly than others, b) If removing the "+" means that now three out of three of those searches fail.
Re:The Feature Google Killed The + Command For Is Now Dead by DanBC on Sunday June 22, 2014 @10:18AM (#7927879)
And no information if the correctly used pluses were inserted by humans, deliberately, and were useful.

Still, I am surprised that Google has made search so poor for so many people in some situations. Although I understand they've done some work on making programming code easier to search for?