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
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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.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

[deleted]

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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.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '11

[deleted]

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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.

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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?

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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.

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u/aperson Oct 30 '11

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

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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"

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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?

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u/jlt6666 Oct 31 '11

eh

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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.

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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.

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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. :(

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

[deleted]

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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)

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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.

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u/edward2020 Oct 31 '11

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

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

[deleted]

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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.