Noticed this as well. I've gotten so frustrated with poor results for things I need, I've been using "Verbatim" mode to force Google to stop interpreting my terms. This was a pain, so ended up installing an extension that forces verbatim on every search.
Recently, I searched "(-)-BPAP" -- with the quotes -- looking for the chemical benzofuranylpropylaminopentane, which is typically referred to as (-)-BPAP. EVERY result was for a BiPAP ventilator.
So I tried verbatim. It still didn't work.
Verbatim + quotation marks. Still nothing.
I guess New Google Search simply doesn't recognize the "(-)-" part of the search term. But this is characteristic of its recent performance. I can't even count the number of times Google disregarded part of my search term and gave me an inane result.
> Google Search simply doesn't recognize the "(-)-" part of the search term.
AFAIK, Google search has always ignored parentheses and most punctuation symbols (other than ones that are special to it, like +require_term -exclude_term "...")
So I tried verbatim. It still didn't work.
Verbatim + quotation marks. Still nothing.
I guess New Google Search simply doesn't recognize the "(-)-" part of the search term. But this is characteristic of its recent performance. I can't even count the number of times Google disregarded part of my search term and gave me an inane result.