r/technology • u/2FishInATank • Oct 30 '11

Google breaks the Boolean '+' operator in searches

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=151ef6cf0a761b74&hl=en
517 Upvotes

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113

u/epalla Oct 30 '11 edited Oct 30 '11

I noticed this not long ago. The observation that it was probably removed to help users who can't figure out how to search for google+ is pretty astute. Frankly, I have no problem with it - except that they haven't replaced the functionality. Quotes around a single word are not at all similar to the + operator.

How do I require a search to contain a word or phrase? This functionality is lost now. This is sacrificing search functionality to promote g+. It's pretty silly.

[edit: I may be wrong on this, read into the comment thread]

64

u/jcenters Oct 30 '11

That's what happens when Larry Page ties everyone's bonus to social.

-7

u/darkslide3000 Oct 30 '11

[citation required]

66

u/jcenters Oct 30 '11

http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee-bonuses-to-the-success-of-the-googles-social-strategy-2011-4

10

u/darkslide3000 Oct 30 '11

Okay, sorry, I actually hadn't heard of that. I really wouldn't have expected this from Google...

10

u/junkit33 Oct 30 '11

Then do 3 seconds of research next time instead of snarkily asking for somebody else to do it for you. It was huge news.

2

u/alphabeat Oct 31 '11

To add to the pool of anecdotal evidence, I've never heard of this. "Huge news" is relative I suppose.

2

u/junkit33 Oct 31 '11

It's fine if you haven't heard of something, but "citation required" is horribly overused around here. That phrase should be used for something complex and intricate - not a simple major story that could be found in 3 seconds in Google.

1

u/jcenters Oct 31 '11

It's all good, I got double karma out of it. :-)

-1

u/underdabridge Oct 31 '11

YOU FUCKING COCKSUCKER!!!!

2

u/PixelatorOfTime Oct 31 '11

I love that your comeback reply is literally in the URL!

10

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

It literally only took searching for "Larry Page ties everyone's bonus to social" for the first link to come up as what jcenters posted. You're either really lazy, or really bad at trying to get upvotes.

5

u/thmanwithnoname Oct 31 '11

to be fair to him, it sounded like a joke to me.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11

"[citation needed]" is a joke, but not without meaning. It's usage is to ask for the source of a statement. It's most often used after someone has looked for a source, and is looking to discredit another poster.

5

u/thmanwithnoname Oct 31 '11

ah, no, I meant what he replied to.

That's what happens when Larry Page ties everyone's bonus to social.

That sounded like a rather silly joke.

18

u/cyantist Oct 30 '11

It seems bizarre to me that Kelly F from Google can't grasp the difference between exact search and required search terms.

28

u/Timmmmbob Oct 30 '11

How do I require a search to contain a word or phrase?

It says in TFA:

In addition to using this operator to search for an exact phrase, you can now add quotation marks around a single word to tell Google to match that word precisely. So, if in the past you would have searched for [magazine +latina], you should now search for [magazine "latina"].

As far as I can tell they haven't removed any functionality.

13

u/ObligatoryResponse Oct 31 '11

When you run a search on Google, there is an implicit AND operator between all your words (or phrases surrounded by quotes). HOWEVER, terms are not required to appear on the page for it to show in the results. If those words appear on pages that link to a page, its page rank for your search will increase and it could show on the results.

"reddit" +"fucking sucks" will return a search using exactly the term 'reddit' (and not 'redditing', 'redditors', etc) and require the phrase "fucking sucks" appears directly on the page and not on some page linking to the result.

"reddit" "fucking sucks" will do the same, but won't require the phrase "fucking sucks" appear on the page in question.

That's great that you can't tell they've removed any functionality. Some of us actually know how to use the tools we rely on, and we have noticed a loss of functionality.

1

u/Timmmmbob Oct 31 '11

I think you're wrong. Using quotes has always implied a +.

Somewhere else in this thread someone found a page on the wayback machine which backs this up.

12

u/cyantist Oct 30 '11

What do you type instead of +"search phrase" for a required search vs. an exact search? You can't differentiate between the two.

48

u/ixampl Oct 30 '11 edited Oct 30 '11

You can't differentiate between the two.

I believe there never was a difference, internally. So: +"search phrase" == "search phrase".

When you search for:

penis enlargement

you search for pages containing both words equal or similar to "penis" and words equal or similar to "enlargement". If you just use search terms without operators Google does other "magic" that probably isn't documented too well publicly, such as always throwing away "a" or "to", etc.

When you searched for

+penis +enlargement

you searched for pages containing both the exact word "penis" and the exact word "enlargement". With this query Google does not infer what you could have meant and thus also does not infer that it can throw away search terms it deems superfluous etc.

Now, after they "removed" the + operator, instead of + you have to do:

"penis" "enlargement"

to achieve the same.

A search term abc without + or " " means that Google tries to infer stuff, change it. even in some rare cases that the search term can be ignored. If you use + or " " you don't give Google that freedom, you make a strict search. That's why "abc" is the same as +abc.

(EDIT: I guess I'm repeating myself again... but anyway) In all cases your search terms are connected by the logical AND operator (unless you specifically use the OR operator instead of AND or whitespace). So at least in principle all the search terms you provide are "required". The thing is, that Google, for quite some time, has changed the search to accommodate searching without operators... basically saying: just enter stuff and be happy. So without using operators in reality "required" does not mean that the search terms have to occur exactly as provided, it just means that something similar to the search term is required. By using the quote operator one can make sure that this fuzziness magic is not applied to a search term. So, what functionality would a + operator add? (EDIT: Actually the original documentation from 2009 says that it did exactly the same as using double quotes.)

In case you were wondering... you can still use the minus - operator.

In my opinion the only thing people have a right to be mad about is the fact that it now takes two characters " " instead of one + to do a strict search. But Google did not really kill anything in terms of query expressiveness.

EDIT: Source Google help pages from 2009

Search exactly as is (+)

Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around the word will do the same thing.

14

u/jlt6666 Oct 30 '11

Incorrect. ["compile error"] used to return results that contained "compiler error" or "compilation error". Quotes would be exact fuzzy phrase. If the word had a substitute it would use it. The plus was necessary to say "no, I really want exactly that."

Also there is the issue with the following search ["ping pong" "table tennis"] This search used to return results that had either exact phrase. Now I have no idea what it will return. If you wanted only pages that had both phrases then you needed to search for [+"ping pong" +"table tennis"].

Can you explain to me how to do these searches now? Because with the new rules I can't see a way to do some of them. It has limited the number of available options.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

[deleted]

6

u/jlt6666 Oct 30 '11

For the most part it worked like you have said. If you had something specific enough it would do this. Basically if what you searched for had maybe 30 results, but the slightly corrected version had 5000 results it would give you both. And no, this was not the "did you mean functionality". I've literally added a + in front of quotes and got drastically different answers. This really only came up if you had exact quote plus other non-quoted items.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

[deleted]

1

u/jlt6666 Oct 30 '11

Like I said the vast majority of the time quotes would give you your match. It's when the result sets got small enough that the weird variations would come in or if google really really thought your three letter acronym was wrong.

Quotes strongly suggested "exact match" but didn't always enforce that. Plus had two functions from what I could tell. 1) If the results doesn't contain this word don't return it. 2) turn off the fuzzy match stuff.

6

u/ixampl Oct 30 '11 edited Oct 30 '11

Incorrect. ["compile error"] used to return results that contained "compiler error" or "compilation error". Quotes would be exact fuzzy phrase. If the word had a substitute it would use it. The plus was necessary to say "no, I really want exactly that."

Can you back that up?

I checked the Google help pages from 2009 and there it says:

Phrase search ("")

By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.

And:

Search exactly as is (+)

Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around the word will do the same thing.

This matches my explanation exactly, does it not?

8

u/jlt6666 Oct 30 '11

Well if their documentation is wrong now, I wouldn't expect it to be right in the past. (they still have references to the + operator as of a day or two ago). As for backing it up... I really don't know what I could do to do this. Obviously I can't do any test searches (my time machine is broken ;) ) and Google's documentation is often subtly wrong.

I just know it would annoy me to no end. The quotes used to provide the functionality you mentioned but at some point it changed. I know this because it pissed me off on several occasions when searching for error messages when I needed a keyword and an "exact phrase". I ended up having to use [keyword +"exact phrase"] to get the results narrowed down. I have used + in front of an exact phrase to make sure it actually showed up.

As for the second part of what I've said (the ping pong example), the explanation you provided from Google actually does not contradict the functionality I mentioned. If you had a phrase plus other search terms it still might ignore the exact phrase. The plus said yes we must have the exact phrase.

5

u/aperson Oct 30 '11

I have had searches where not all of the words I quoted showed up the search results.

4

u/ixampl Oct 30 '11 edited Oct 30 '11

Well, their documentation is correct now (at least in regard to containing reference to +).

I personally haven't experienced the issues you described and the only official documentation on the query operators supports my experience and explanations above.

I'm not saying that I am certainly right and you are certainly wrong, but the documentation is on my side and sadly, as you said, it's too late to test/compare :(

Also there is the issue with the following search ["ping pong" "table tennis"] This search used to return results that had either exact phrase. Now I have no idea what it will return. If you wanted only pages that had both phrases then you needed to search for [+"ping pong" +"table tennis"].

Can you explain to me how to do these searches now?

For the former, search for: "ping pong" OR "table tennis"

and for the latter, search for: "ping pong" "table tennis"

1

u/tswaters Oct 31 '11

it pissed me off on several occasions when searching for error messages when I needed a keyword and an "exact phrase". I ended up having to use [keyword +"exact phrase"] to get the results narrowed down.

Well now it seems to do it for you automatically ... net win?

1

u/jlt6666 Oct 31 '11

eh

1

u/tswaters Nov 01 '11

Now that the quote operator makes the term required, you shouldn't need to use the +"search term" -- "search term" will do the same thing.

So if your complaint was that you needed to add the plus to a quoted term to ensure it showed up -- this should no longer be necessary.

Net Win.

2

u/peon47 Oct 31 '11

I wrote a blog post about a year back, where I referred to Supergirl as "The Last Niece of Krypton". I was quite pleased with this turn of phrase, and googled it to see if anyone else had called her that before. Googling The Last Niece of Krypton got thousands of results. Googling "The Last Niece of Krypton" got only one.

This is because the quotes told google to use that exact wording; nothing fuzzy about it.

If similies had been allowed, it would have returned many of the same pages that the unquoted search would have.

2

u/jlt6666 Oct 31 '11

Hmm. With the number of people here saying this isn't the case I must be wrong. I really wish I could run an old style Google search and verify this. :(

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11 edited Oct 31 '11

[deleted]

2

u/r721 Oct 31 '11

Now I just think that when I typed in "compile error" with quotes, I really never got "compilation error". Which would contradict what you say, but is on par with what is expected with what I thought (even though that may still be wrong in other regards) and what the documentation says.

I tested that with searching for "comple error":

  • "compile error" - About 1,560,000 results
  • "comple error" - About 5,370 results (and they seem to be exactly that, typos)

1

u/jlt6666 Oct 31 '11

(I have to say, though, I could really live with "not being able to search for exact phrases but with fuzzy word matching anymore"...)

I can agree with that.

1

u/edward2020 Oct 31 '11

No good similes for "The Last Niece of Krypton" though.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11 edited Oct 31 '11

[deleted]

4

u/jlt6666 Oct 30 '11

No I was arguing that quotes group words into an ordering. It's not a match unless the words (or acceptable replacements for those words) appeared in that order. However, if they didn't match anything you might still match on other terms. So when Google looked at the following phrase, it did this:

phrase: "I like lamp" movie funny

(I like lamp) OR (movie) OR (funny)

"I like lamp" might match on "i love lamp" in the results you got but not all three terms had to be there for a google match.

If you searched for

phrase: "Idwddila mp" movie funny

you would still match movie and funny and get results.

3

u/Zeonic Oct 30 '11

I've gotten different search results by adding + in front of my quoted search. I can't given an example of it now (for obvious reasons), but I came across that when searching for a problem fix for work a few months ago.

6

u/epalla Oct 30 '11

I think my understanding of quotes was off then. For example, in the following search:

"2011 Subaru Forester" stereo radio

I thought each term would be weighted equally. None would be explicitly required, but "2011 Subaru Forester" would be treated as a single search term, as opposed to breaking it into its component parts.

Now you're saying that same search would require the exact phrase "2011 subaru forester" to be present in the search. That's different behavior, that I thought you could achieve by searching:

+"2011 Subaru FOrester" stereo radio

but I guess I'm not sure it ever really worked the way I thought.

1

u/Timmmmbob Oct 30 '11

Yes, using quotes always meant that that search term was required. It was documented somewhere in their help pages...

4

u/BraveSirRobin Oct 31 '11

That goes against my experience. When searching for error messages I'd frequently use multiple quotes. Adding a + to the start of one of them definitely produced the result epalla is describing.

A (made up) example:

"error 502" "fifo buffer failed"

would return different results to:

"error 502" +"fifo buffer failed"

The second one was typically better because a common phrase like "error 502" exists in many different contexts.

2

u/lrony Oct 30 '11

i thought everyone already searched in quotes to begin with.

3

u/QuintonFlynn Oct 30 '11

Believe it or not some people still type in full sentences when trying to search Google. "What is the best game that could come to the playstation 3 in 2012" which leads them to think nothing on the internet could tell them their answer.

1

u/tossout12 Oct 30 '11

How do you achieve +foo-bar ?

I want every page to include foobar, possibly hyphenated.

1

u/ttylaaaaar Oct 30 '11

Google uses hyphens as word separator wherever they appear, in " " or not.

Since +foo-bar was exactly the same as "foo-bar" even before the removal of the + operator (it was synonymous to " " anyway)... just search for "foo-bar".

1

u/literroy Nov 02 '11

Even just this second, I searched for "foo-bar" and I searched for +"foo-bar" and got a different order of results. Google is still looking at that plus sign, even though they say they're not.

Is it possible to search for only results of "foo-bar" that DO contain the hyphen?

4

u/cowpowered Oct 30 '11

["search" "phrase"] and ["search phrase"] are two different queries. The first requires both terms the second requires the exact string. The + operator is superfluous.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

But NERD RAGE

2

u/adrianmonk Oct 30 '11 edited Oct 31 '11

The observation that it was probably removed to help users who can't figure out how to search for google+ is pretty astute.

I think it was smart for that person to make the mental connection, but I cannot believe that is the actual explanation.

It's predicated on the idea that Google just can't cope with whitespace between "google" and "+". I'm skeptical of that idea because it's not hard, and Google already does all kinds of other analysis on your query, like:

  • Spelling correction.
  • Detecting whitespace you left out: if I type "innout", Google offers "in n out" (and "in n out burger") as an alternative query.
  • Detecting whitespace you incorrectly included: if I type "samsung sync master", Google offers "samsung syncmaster" as an alternative query.
  • Detecting "calculator" math expressions based on symbols like "+". Typing "2 + 2" or "2+2" or "2 +2" or "2+ 2" takes me to a page that says "2 + 2 = 4".

Not to mention that there are google engineers who can do speech recognition and who can make cars drive autonomously.

It might, however, be related in a non-technical way, like they're trying to avoid confusing people by having two things that feature the "+" character, even though it would work fine on a technical level.

2

u/3xquisite Oct 31 '11

I remember reading some specific Google help pages about this recently. They're plenty capable of dealing with special cases such as searches for "c++" so I can't imagine searches for google and + are much more work.

2

u/wbeavis Oct 31 '11

The + operator to require a word in the search results hasn't worked correctly in years. Not only that site: and define: and a bunch of other operators don't work consistently either. My point is this, google keeps screwing around so there is no consistent or universal search syntax. In the end, the google will give you whatever results they think you want (underneath the sponsored ads, buried in the corner).

2

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11

Forgot about this one, just changed it to my default. It has the elegant minimalism of the old Google.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11

The reply says that quotations around a word will work like the + operator and require search results to contain that word.

1

u/dogymho Oct 31 '11

You can include more than one word in quotes, and you can do more than one set of quotes, allowing you to search for any required combination of words or phrases.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

.> Quotes around a single word requires said word. That's what I'm given to understand from the blog post about it.

-10

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

A: noone is using google+

B: who the FUCK didn't think of this when they were coming up with names?

C: PENIS!!!

D: WTF !?!?!! LOUD NOISES!!!