[wildmanx]

I've used quoted searches now and then in the past, as recently as last week or so, and it definitely did not work. There were no usable results, none of the results shown did contain the exact words. Is there a bug somewhere?

[dannysullivan]

If you have an example you're comfortable sharing, I'm happy to take a look with the team (I work for Google Search). It's designed to match content as described in the post.

[cobbaut]

Search "xaverius franciscus"

Only one of the first six results contains the exact phrase, the others all have other characters between these two words.

Search +"napoloen" And it insists on including napoleon.

Please include an 'expert' mode or something for people who know what they are looking for.

[dannysullivan]

Every result I looked at on the first three pages have those words, and those words being clearly indicated in the snippets. Some of them have punctuation between the words. As the post explains, we see punctuation as spaces -- please do look at the post about this, if you haven't. As for the + operator, that hasn't been supported for ages. Putting the + symbol means nothing. You just need to do "napoloen" for an exact match on that. Which, if you do, causes us to say:

Showing results for "napoleon" Search instead for "napoloen"

So while you said you wanted a quote search, our systems are really really concerned that for this spelling, you're making a terrible mistake. Which, I get as a power user, is annoying. And which, we probably should review and perhaps never substitute a different search.

But ... we are telling you that happened. And providing a link to override what we did and say yes, I really know what I'm looking for, do it. Which -- if you click on, we'll do.

[cobbaut]

Thanks. Yes, I understand about the punctuation now.

About 'napoloen', I often search for non-english words that differ only one letter from an English word (English is my fourth language). I wish there was a way to permanently disable "Did you mean?"-results.

A new one... I just got this, searching for: libmad +tutorial

Several results with "Missing: +tutorial"... Why are results included that do not contain the word 'tutorial'?

[dannysullivan]

Again, the + symbol isn't a command and does nothing. If you searched for [libmad +tutorial] we saw that as as search for pages with both or either of two words, libmad OR +tutorial, plus any related words or synonyms, like tutorial.

So with that search, we're trying to show you things we think are relevant, and there aren't a lot of pages relevant with the word +tutorial on them. Tutorial, yes -- but not +tutorial.

In this case, what you really want is this: [libmad "tutorial"] -- that says get pages that have both words or words related to libmad but ONLY pages that actually have the word tutorial on them.

[skripp]

libmad "tutorial". The + does nothing.

[cobbaut]

So basically always double quote every word. Thanks.

[towolf]

Are you aware of the "Tools -> Verbatim" mode?

[cobbaut]

Yes I am very aware of this.

Can it be set as default?

Verbatim will still include results with other characters between "franciscus xaverius"than a space. Like a ( or a dot. It includes results containing a phrase that ends with Fransciscus. And the next phrase beginning with Xaverius. This is useless when searching ancestors.

I know the service is free, but it would be really cool to be able to search for any (ASCII) string verbatim.

[ChoGGi]

If can be if you add a custom search engine

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32351006