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by philgoetz 4840 days ago
I never found Google Code Search useful. What I wanted to be able to do was to search for code expressions with Google -- to be able, for instance, to search for the words "C++" or "call-next-method", exactly as I type them, punctuation and casing and all. No synonyms, no "corrections", no singular/plural conversions, no punctuation-stripping. Google never provided a way to search for exactly what I asked it to search for. Still the main thing missing from google search.
4 comments

Google's Verbatim tool doesn't do the job?

http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

I wrote up a quick reponse to that one (many googlers ask for data when confronted with how their main product is declining) and here it is: techinorg.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-is-going-on-with-search-results.html

Not pretty but have some real examples. Please post your own and paste a link here or in the comments.

Copied from comment on blog:

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Anonymous14 March, 2013 19:55

Obviously a comparison of search results is difficult due to the various signals used to alter search results, but as of 3/14/2013 I get what appear to be 'reasonable' results for both of your example searches:

"sublime text 2" "focus group" : http://i.imgur.com/4LpuUYq.png

cisco "anyclient" : http://i.imgur.com/kptK8HO.png

Again, doesn't necessarily detract from your issue, but just giving search terms isn't reproducible!

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I can now verify that Cisco "Anyclient" is not silently rewritten anymore. Will have to wait and see if they weeded out this particular snag, if they adjusted their fuzzing towards sane or if they just gave me a better bubble (I'd like that I think.).

Verbatim doesn't even fully disable word corrections. There is no way at all to search for punctuation characters. Try it yourself, type in ((((())))) or something and look at all zero results.
Their implementation was lacking, but the concept was sound. Someone could get this right, particularly if it was marketed as a learning tool.
Weird. I find they get literal code searches correct very very frequently.
Code search allowed regular expression searches.