| Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 10.04.12 23:28 | Hello. I've suggested previously to Google that it re-instate some form of "verbatim" searching, and I've recently noticed a "verbatim" option on the left column in Google Search. This was especially exciting to me, since many of my searches seem to depend on NOT getting results based on "fuzzy" search algorithms. Some examples include computer error messages (especially really ugly/technical ones), and searches for the meanings of unusual words or phrases. Unfortunately, it would seem that the "verbatim" option does little or nothing in the way of preserving the text of what I'm *actually* searching for. Here's an example: On this site: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention.html ...nearly at the bottom, there is the following quote: "Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention (as all authours in a n, doo saye)." This quote seems to be from the 1600s, and as such, it uses some rather archaic spelling and language. I wanted to know the meaning of, "in a n," so I did the following Google search on www.google.com: "in a n" meaning Since this brought in everything BUT what I was looking for, I rephrased it: +"in a n" meaning Irritatingly, this had no effect. The top result (which was reflective of all the others) was: A riddle wrapped up in an enigmaThis, of course, was unsatisfactory, so I clicked the "verbatim" option and repeated the search, both with and result the "+". To my annoyance, there was still no change. So, in order to remove a potential trouble-maker, I disabled personalized search results with the button provided. Still, I couldn't get Google to search for the text I typed in! In fact, Google didn't even give me a line to the effect of, "no results for X, so showing results for Y." I realize that "fuzzy" search algorithms are useful, and I actually get good results on some searches as a result, but on some types of searches, such as for archaic language and technical messages, "fuzzy" searching is utterly unacceptable. In point of fact, back in the 1990s, when I switched to using Google, I did so largely on the basis that it accepted operands that allowed for advanced control over searches, such as "AND" and "OR." Back then, basically all searches happened literally, so getting results for stuff I didn't search for wasn't an issue. Today, however, hardly a day goes by where I must argue at length with Google to get it to search for what I actually typed in, rather than what it has decided I must have really meant. In almost every case, I'm forced to concede defeat and sift through many, many pages of irrelevant search results, in hopes of finding a single genuine "hit" that I can use. So, my question to the community is this: Do you have this problem? If so, how often? How bothersome is it to you? What would you have changed about Google's searching algorithms and/or features? My question to Google, on the other hand, is this: What must I and/or the community do to be able to search for the exact text I type into Google's search engine? Since "fuzzy" searching has become de facto these days, I have yet to find another search engine I can switch to in order to get useful results for searches where this is a problem. If such a thing presents itself to me, though, I can guarantee that (unless it's otherwise abysmal), I'll use it instead, at least for some kinds of searches. I don't know if Google, as a company, sees this as a problem, but I do, at least, fervently request that you make it possible (and not terribly difficult) to search for things without engaging your otherwise useful "fuzzy" search algorithms. What is your response? Thanks for reading. --Dane |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Huntermun | 07.05.12 16:41 | I experience this problem constantly and would likely cease using Google to search if 1) it wasn't built into the Superbar and 2) I thought anything else was actually better. I consider this to be one of a few recent errors that Google has made. I absolutely hate Google searching for things I'm not searching for and would settle for an option to make Verbatim the result (if it worked... I haven't used it as extensively as you seem to have... I just learned about it today). I remember when quotes and + and - all worked like they were supposed to. Just off the top of my head, I'd also love Google to allow us to alter what ones of its options are in that top bar on every screen instead of hiding Products and Video in the list (when Video use to be where YouTube now is, anyway)... but that's getting off topic. Yes, it annoys me. Yes, I would like a way around it... I can't stand Google searching for things "kind'a like" what I'm looking for. I hate it. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 07.05.12 19:03 | I'm glad that you chimed in, Huntermun. I was beginning to think that nobody was going to take notice of my thread about this. Now, if we can just get Google to notice it... I do wonder if Google Product Forums is a sort of "symlink" to "/dev/null"...I haven't seen many (well, any, actually, so long as I've been paying attention) threads here get significant attention from Google folks. One would think that their flagship product would at least warrant an occasional post from a Google employee, if only to say, "thanks; go away; have a nice day." (Sorry for the cynicism.) |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Argus Canis | 17.05.12 22:39 | As it happens I ran into this today. I was trying to track down the origin of a set of hymn lyrics and tried to use the 'verbatim' search to help me, but the results were clearly not searched verbatim. Searching for the first line of the hymn returned all kinds of replies with the same words...with other words interspersed, or missing some of them, or in other orders, grammatical forms, etc. How is that verbatim? I run into this issue often as I often find myself trying to find lyrics or specific text strings to determine where they came from, and frankly it would be more helpful to have no results found than it is to wade through pages of quasi-matches. It was also hard to find the verbatim search option. Why is it so hard to find the advanced search options which used to work so well? |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | jedenfalls | 27.05.12 19:13 | I have also been stuck behind the feels like a stupid wall, looking for a way to climb it. I search for something and the first few pages don't even all my search terms. No warning, no clue, no warning. Then when someone asks for help here in the forums some employee, acting like a reverse troll, espouses how much better this new way is than the old. When you say that the old way was why you switched in the first place, you are told to give it a try, you'll see its better. I ask this, does google even care what we want. Google used to be a company that valued its users. What has happened? If this were the old google there would be a way to permanently leave verbatim on. There would be a way to selectively turn the + on per search, maybe like this. want:{term1 "term2"} musthave:{term3 "term5"} except:{"term4" term6} But google is not a company for people who know what they want anymore. If it were, then a way to define the search in a query like manner as above would exist, the geek engineers who founded it wouldn't have had it any other way. Hoping someone someone working for google reads this and actually passes it on unlike what I have seen so far. If there were an alternative, I would use it. I want a useful search engine back. Jedenfalls. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | JensLynIV | 29.05.12 14:36 | I remember when Google was the tool of choice for esoteric searches, the best tool with which to expose the darkest, most obscure - yet useful - corners of the web. Google was, in the past, a thoroughly excellent search tool. Today's Google seems to go out of its way to hide the same results it went out of its way to expose 10 years ago. Even in so-called verbatim mode and with double quotes around a whole sentence I get completely irrelevant results containing only a single word from the search string. Some searches which would have been a piece of cake on Google a decade ago are seemingly impossible now. This is a terrible state of affairs, and no one among Google's staff seems at all bothered with it, at least not publicly. A particular pet peeve of mine is the ignorant and needlessly restrictive handling of languages throughout Google's many products. It causes particular problems with web searches chiefly by applying undefeatable language filtering to the ordering of search results. I read Danish and English effortlessly, German, Norwegian, and Swedish easily, some Spanish, and a little bit of Latin, and I can make some sense of many of these languages' close relatives, such as Dutch, Italian, French, and Portuguese. That's 11 languages that I would probably want results from by default, but Google will only allow me to request results in 8 languages or less. A truly global search is effectively impossible because of this limitation. A more general annoyance is the synonym detector which, for some reason, often cannot tell a synonym from an antonym. It is frighteningly common to see search terms replaced with their direct opposite. Excluding synonyms, while great for some specific searches, is not always a compelling option. I'd like to see more reliable synonym detection, but I don't know if I trust a machine to achieve that without human intervention, something Google seems to shy away from. Many search features are poorly documented. Generally, exact instructions will make it easier to perform an exact task. I wish Google searches could somehow become an exact science. All the help pages seem to focus on is how to make an overly narrow search broader, there's no mention on how to best narrow a search down. Google seems very secretive about the way it arrives at its search results, and I can understand not wanting to give away the recipe that made the company, but some insight into why Google thought a particular page relevant would be very helpful, I think. My problems in summary:
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| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 03.06.12 06:11 | JensLynIV, That was a very well-thought-out response. I think that your suggestions would go a long way to fixing this problem, if implemented. Even if I could just get the "+" operator to work as it's supposed to, that would be great. Have you ever tried searching for an error message from terminal output? My goodness, it's a pain--and very unlikely to produce anything like what you typed in unless a lot of other people have already been struggling with it (and have posted to numerous forums--not just a few, mind--etc.). The "verbatim" search tool (left-hand side-bar) proves utterly useless for this kind of search. You know what the biggest irony (probably) is? Since Chrome/Chromium OS is based on Linux, it's probably going to run into the very same error messages as happens on, say, Ubuntu--and Google Search won't be of much/any help in resolving them! <Insert sardonic laughter here.> I, too, am frustrated with Google's lack of easily-accessible documentation--especially where narrowing a search is concerned. Even finding "basic" Google Documentation is not nearly as easy as it should be. I hate the way companies have begun dealing with customer service: a search bar which produces articles vaguely similar to your problem--but not at all helpful, in most cases. Honestly, I can't see any "typical" user having many problems with TOO MUCH specificity, since most people seem to be unaware that you can even use quotes to search for a phrase (insomuch as that works)! Pile on the "fuzzy" searching algorithms--as noted previously in this thread--and all you're likely to get are extremely broad searches that are only really useful for finding extremely popular content--like Facebook, Wordpress, Wikipedia, etc.--which could be found about as easily by typing in their respective, intuitive URLs. I really hope Google takes notice of this problem (and this tread) sometime soon. I realize that I'm not paying for Google services, directly, but they're certainly raking the cash from ad revenue that my visits generate--and one would think that they're at least interested in making their products better than this--and at least as good as they were circa year 2000--which is when I abandoned AltaVista for Google, due to Google's then-great specific search algorithms. These days, I find myself wishing that AltaVista remained a serious competitor, so that Google would have kept trying to be better than it now is. Come to think of it, I might try switching back... |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | JensLynIV | 12.07.12 06:20 | And Google remains silent... |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 12.07.12 06:47 | *sigh* I've noticed some imrovements to verbatim search, lately (particularly using the "+" character), but I think it still needs work. It's unfortunate that Google's being so silent on the topic, though. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 12.07.12 06:49 | Also, since this has been the top thread on their "suggestions" forum for a while, I find it likely that they're (Google staff) simply uninterested in this venue. I wonder at why it still exists, if this is, in fact, the case. (I hope to be proven wrong.) |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Thomas P. | 12.07.12 20:30 | OK, I'm not a Googler - but I do know my way around searching with Google, so ... There's a lot questions & issues in this thread so I'm going to bit a bit brief, The '+'-operator: Was once a way to make a specific word be taken as a litteral searchword (i.e. no stemming, no synonyms). However! Google removed it some time ago, and the '+'-operator then soon after got recycled into being related to Google+ searching. Today: To make any specific word or phrase be taken as litteral/verbatim, you MUST enclose it in doublequotes. (NO '+'-operator) Now, about using doublequotes: It is being taken as verbatim, but ... Where (?) : In text as found in page, or in title of page, or in links (anchor texts, on other pages) pointing to page, or even in the URL (?) The answer is yes, yes, yes and yes. Uhh (?) Yes! - I'd like you to meet some friends of mine; the search operators for being more specific on such: intitle: intext: inanchor: inurl: It's not extremely uncommon to see user-compliants in this forum, stating something like: >>My searching for butthurtbrigade gives me results, which does not include that word<< And the answer is: Instead of searching for [ butthurtbrigade ] then try [ intext:butthurtbrigade ] or [ intext:butthurtbrigade intitle:butthurtbrigade ] Beware: Getting too creative, is where Google's brilliance ends. A search like: [ "Dog" -intitle:"Dog" ] where you're also using the negation operator (the minus), combing the negation with the intitle:-operator, and also doing doublequoting : Fails! (pages with "Dog" in the title shouldn't be found in SERP, but they are) The specific phrase "in an n" does pose a particular problem: As far as I can tell, then the "n" is: Getting throw away in parsing and that possibly being because a single letter is to meager for Google to index, - hence it wouldn't return results. Yet ... Bing is doing fine there, returning results like "Number of diagonals in an n-sided polygon ..." and ".. DataSets in an N-Tier Application" ... and DuckDuckGo is also doing fine with [ meaning "in an n" ] As for using boolean logic - operators AND and OR then ... Well, If you need to use parentheses, then go elsewhere, e.g. Bing - because Google does not support parentheses, and Google got a weird idea about operator precedence of the AND and OR. (incidently being one of the things that actually is documented by Google. ... Want more more documentation from Google (?) .. Ha-Ha-Ha, go click some Adds instead, and generate some revenue for poor Google) The language issue (raised by Jens Lyn ... the 4'th!?) of searching for pages in max 8 different languages, is really a bit of a non-issue, or if an issue then certainly not as bad as Google's unavoidable location detection & enforcement. I'd recommend not selecting any languages at all (in the search settings), i.e. just leaving the mandatory language there (mandatory as per the selected language for Google's own user display language .. aka UI Language). Because, when searching, using more than just one (or two) words - then you're bound to get result in languages that matches the language(s) of those search words. I actually recently had the kind of opposite problem: I wanted to see how much the location played a role in the results, - and I really had to think long and hard to come up with some words being identical in multiple languages (I ended up using "radio" and "radio museum", though "museum" in that spelling isn't very good in but very few languages) Think about it, - say you're in Denmark, running the UI in English, and do the search [ krankenhaus kontrolle ] (I tested it, and: the first 100 results are all in German - and I had not specified to search in German, nor is my UI in German, nor am I located in Germany). _________ By the way: If any of you are on Google+ and availble Friday (or any Friday) at 18:00UTC, then we're a small group doing Hangouts-On-Air about Google Search related issues. See https://plus.google.com/116168892462000328013/posts for messages on upcoming hangouts, - and if you want to join in, then we'd be happy to meet you there ;-) ... Beware: The "helpdeskhangouts" is a "Google+ Page", and you may need to circle it, for being able to get an invitation to join the hangout(s) we're hosting. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | JensLynIV | 13.07.12 16:26 | I must admit to completely forgetting about the intitle:, etc. operators. That could be the ticket to avoiding much of the clutter I've been ranting about. Casual testing looks promising, I'll have to keep these in mind. Oh, and they are on the advanced search page so you don't have to memorise them, but you can only get there by doing a basic search and clicking a curiously inconspicuous link at the bottom of the results page. I just don't get Google's recent UI design choices... As for the language issue, it is certainly not a non-issue. One problem I didn't mention earlier is the preferential sorting of results according to interface language. Essentially, Google assumes that I always prefer search results in a particular language, and while that might not ruin your 'Krankenhaus Kontrolle' search, less language-specific terms will generally return nothing but English results. If a site is available in more than one language, Google will invariably show results from the English version damn near exclusively, and any foreign-language results from the same site will typically be buried several pages deep even if the first result from the English version is at the top of page 1. I should also add that I am not impressed with Google's language detection. It frequently confuses Danish and Norwegian, even in cases where the text is obviously a better match against a Danish dictionary than a Norwegian one. Indeed, I just tested this in Gmail which presumably uses the same language detector as Google search. I created a draft email, typed 4 sentences in flawless Danish, and ran spellcheck with automatic language detection. It found two errors. Manually specifying Danish, it found no errors, while switching to Norwegian bokmål highlighted the original two "errors", confirming my suspicion. There are probably countless other examples in all sorts of languages, and it would be less of a problem if the assumed relevance of search results didn't have to depend so heavily on this mechanism. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Thomas P. | 13.07.12 18:07 | Search Operators The Advanced Search Page: There's a twist! It's the all-prefixed variants of the search operators you'll be able to retreive/deduct from there. These are same: [ allintitle: Dog Rescue ] and [ intitle:Dog intitle:Rescue ] and [ allintitle: Rescue Dog ] and [ intitle:Rescue intitle:Dog ] Which is different from [ Dog allintitle: Rescue ] also being different from [ Rescue allintitle:Dog ] The allintitle:-operator extends to end of line, or to next mmm:-operator (same story for all the all-prefixed operator variants) Also Note! There's a space immidiately following the colon with any all-prefixed operator variants. (no space for the non-all-prefixed variants)
You're anything but alone ;-) While being on the subject of avoiding clutter, then don't bubble yourself (unless you find it usefull): How to turn of Web History. You might addtionally also consider setting your homepage to something like: Language OK, so you didn't buy into my [ krankenhaus kontrolle ]. Could you provide a couple of real life samples? (which are more than just a few lazy words) - I'd really like to see them (and so would Google; unless Google get a bit of stimulation, they'll just carry on as always). Language Detection Yeeees, - The Danish, Norwegian puzzle ... seems a bit of a recent thing. I've lately begun seeing it often too. (I don't know what they've been feeding their bots, but it must have said "Norwegian" on the jar or can) - Hopefully, it's just a phase ;-| |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | JensLynIV | 14.07.12 07:02 | Hm, I'll have to make a decent attempt at an esoteric search sometime soon... |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | kencgm | 14.07.12 10:59 | I got some great tips here, the 'intext' thing must explain why I can't find my term in the pages I load. Count me among the group that is really dissatisfied with the changes to literal searching. It has really reduced the usefulness of Google for me, and I would switch in a heartbeat if someone can provide an alternative that provides the option to handle things the way Google used to. One example - I'm a beer home-brewer, and I would often search for home-brewing related things, but the terms were common terms. So I would include brewing specific terms like "wort" (the cooked, but un-fermented 'raw' beer) in the search, and that worked great. Until these changes, and I started getting mostly links for "wart removers". Yuck! C'mon Google - the accuracy of your search results, w/o a bunch of unrelated junk is what made me recc you to everyone. I ca't do that any longer. Please - provide the option for literal searches, quotes that do what we expect, logic operators and parenthesis. -kencgm |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 15.07.12 04:24 | Thanks for the tips! Unfortunately, the quotes mechanism you described doesn't work reliably. Type this into Google Search, with personalized results off: lvresize "Failure to communicate with kernel device-mapper driver" The first entry is this: http://osdir.com/ml/kernel.device-mapper.devel/2006-09/msg00069.html Now, hit CTRL-F on your keyboard, and paste the quoted string into the "find on page" bar: Failure to communicate with kernel device-mapper driver No results on page. As you can see, this is a problem when trying to find specific esoteric terms, such as computer error messages. Yes, other results on the search page do have this particular quoted string, but the fact that there are results that DON'T have it proves my point about the search not being truly "verbatim," even when using quotes. I also don't think it makes sense to get results for a phrase that Google can't find (as in the "in a n" example), rather than saying "no results found"--without saying it's searching for something different. Notably, Google does give a "no results" message sometimes, so I doubt that the engine is doing as you've described. I have had better success on this "Failure to communicate with kernel device-mapper driver" example, using your suggestion about "intext:"--like this: lvresize intext:"Failure to communicate with kernel device-mapper driver" This might be doing what I need it to; I'll have to use it more and find out. In any case, thanks for posting your suggestions; I found it very enlightening despite your reference to our collectively-hurt backside. :-D Have a good day. --Dane |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Thomas P. | 15.07.12 22:56 | - does not produce that page ( http://osdir.com/ml/kernel.device-mapper.devel/2006-09/msg00069.html ) anywhere in the results to me. Could you please take a screenshot?
As I already pointed out: It is being verbatim, but to relevance - quote from previous post: Now, about using doublequotes: It is being taken as verbatim, but ... Where (?): In text as found in page, or in title of page, or in links (anchor texts, on other pages) pointing to page, or even in the URL (?)The answer is yes, yes, yes and yes.Uhh (?) Yes! - I'd like you to meet some friends of mine; the search operators for being more specific on such:intitle: intext: inanchor: inurl: Below searches may/will always return different results: (as you also have discovered)
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| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 15.07.12 19:36 |
What the...? I just did the search again, and it's no longer winding up on the search results page. I even went through all 3 pages of entries (could have sworn there were more--like 5 or 10 more--earlier) and there are no osdir pages, at all--which is extremely weird for any Linux-related search. Either the search algorithms were changed very recently; or some browser anomaly ([tracking] cookies, cache, whatever) has changed; or someone working for Google really is reading this thread. Yes, I know that sounds paranoid. :-p I can't adequately explain why the results are so dramatically different from how they were earlier. Just to be clear, I used non-personalized results, both times. Your instructions about the "intext:" and "intitle:" are well-received, and the former seems to work well on this search (or it did earlier; haven't tried it again since). To clarify, can you really do "intitle:intext:'search term'" like that? That would be cool, but unless you have experience with it to confirm that it works, I'd think that the engine isn't quite that clever. Thanks for your posts, Thomas P. --Dane |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Thomas P. | 15.07.12 22:59 | Neither when being signed in, nor when running my browser InPrivate (aka InCognito) - am I seeing any results from the osdir.com site. So I was very currious about your results including anything from osdir.com (and since I'm only getting a max. of 35 results, then I really can't think of an explanation other than you might have made a typo, or ... some other human error ... we'll probably never know ... except if you can find the search URLs in your Browser's locale history, but it's not really important to me )
Erhhm, I see I made a typo (cut & paste error) in my last post. Sorry, - the last example should of course always have read: (I have now gone back and corrected it, to:)
The "almost" only thing to watch out for, is Google's odd operator precedence for OR (and AND). A search like [ term1 term2 OR term3 ] implies (as you already know) [ term1 AND term2 OR term3 ] If Google had support for parantheses, then you'd find that Google interprets that as [ term1 AND ( term2 OR term3 ) ] not [ ( term1 AND term2 ) OR term3 ] It's just something to watch out for, since other search engines do follow normal rules of precedence for Boolean operators. ... and then also note that Google's negation operator is a always minus (no NOT variant for Google), so do not look a this (nor this, nor that) |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | namangwari | 22.10.12 21:31 | I would have to say that my searches -- even while enclosed in quotation marks, with a plus sign in front -- +"like so" -- still do not return pages with that search term on the page. What. The. Hell. And how can we put Verbatim in the ALWAYS ON setting?!?!!? |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Thomas P. | 23.10.12 06:47 | The +-operator was killed in Oct.2011; Making an exact match on a individual word, can thus now only be done by double-quoting the/those word(s). Note: Using a + in front of something double-quoted, has always been either redundant or non-sense. If you want matching of search-word(s) inside the text of pages, then: That's what the intext:-operator is for. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 23.10.12 07:10 | As previously stated, double-quoting, alone doesn't produce verbatim results of the quoted text. That's why a +"some text" used to be necessary, much as +text was used for single words. I've had decent success with intext:"some text", but even that hasn't been entirely reliable. Also, it's needlessly cumbersome to type. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | kencgm | 23.10.12 07:34 | So is there someplace that publishes all these new rules to allow us to search the 'old way'? The 'new way' fails me, but I can't follow all these various comments in a thread - is it summarized somewhere, so I an copy/paste it and have it for reference? I can't understand how Google could do this w/o providing a 'setting' option for the old, straight forward way that worked for so many of us. Thanks - kenc |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 23.10.12 09:10 | This page, as well as the menu on its left side provide some mostly-outdated advice: http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861&topic=1221265&ctx=topic Also, there's the "Advanced Search" page (which is pretty cumbersome, I think): http://www.google.com/advanced_search So far as I can tell, Google hasn't posted any such list of the "new" search rules. :-( |
| JJS90 | 23.10.12 17:37 | <Diese Nachricht wurde gelöscht.> | |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Jessica S. | 23.10.12 17:43 | Hi dmutters, Could you please provide an example in which double quoting does not produce verbatim results? Additionally, we'd love to know when this occurs, so please feel free to reach out via the Give Us Feedback link on the homepage. That feedback is then used to inform how we improve search quality. Thanks! Jess |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 23.10.12 18:23 | Thank-you for taking an interest in this issue. I just did a "cat /var/log/dmesg" in search of something to Google for, and this is what I used as my search string (including quotes): "HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8" The first result was this: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=114116 To see if this string existed on this page, verbatim, I pressed CTRL-F in Firefox and pasted my search string, like so: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8 This string was not found on the page. Notably, some other search hits did produce this string, verbatim. This is a constant source of frustration when searching for error messages, as nearly all hits for certain messages don't contain anything like the string I looked for. I'll keep my eyes open for a better example (one where there are pages and pages of false hits on Google search), and will post it here when I find one. Thanks for your time. --Dane |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 25.11.12 14:32 | Here's a better example; search for this: site:steamcommunity.com linux "window" missing I want "window" not "windows" since the latter refers to a different OS, rather than to an application window. Here are the first few results; pay special attention to the second one, which does not include the word, "window" (or the plural, even) anywhere on the page. I have "personal searching" turned off. About 6,100 results (0.12 seconds) Search Results
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| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | GoogleIsUseless | 09.01.13 21:44 | Google has become completely useless. I'm a longtime power user and things have become so bad, especially since the Boolean + operator was removed, that it's almost worthless. I've been helping my son with his homework tonight and the results are so bad in Google, that I've used Bing exclusively to help him with his assignment because the results are far more accurate and relevant. I'm also a long time user of Google Scholar and that too is nearly useless as it's impossible to find the exact information I'm seeking. Never would I have imaged using Bing, or any other search engine,but Google has literally become useless. We can only hope that Microsoft will continue to improve so that someday, Bing will produce the highly relevant results that Google used to do. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Brent212 | 10.01.13 10:48 | I hadn't heard of these "intext" and "intitle" operators, but they will
hopefully be incredibly useful for reducing my frustration with google
in the future. I assume that the main problem I've been having is that
it defaults to "inall", which includes the silly "inanchor" operator,
producing results that only have the word/phrase in links pointing to
the page. I can't believe anyone at google could be off their rocker
enough to think that should be a default operator and not a separate
option that people need to actively select, but hey, all software
companies seem to be plagued by decision makers who are clueless when it
comes to making UIs. The annoying thing is now my searches are going to have to be three times as long, since obviously 99% of the time people are okay with their search results having the terms/phrases they searched for in one or more of the title, URL, or page text. It's hilarious that they think anyone cares about a page that doesn't have what they're searching for, but is linked to by a page that does. "Hey! We know you were searching for cats, but here's a page about dogs! There's a page about cats that has a link to this one, so instead of showing you the cats page we thought you'd probably want to check out this dogs page." |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 10.01.13 11:04 | +1 to the previous two posts! |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | kencgm | 10.01.13 11:52 | Interesting and encouraging that a Google Employee chimed in ( Jessica S. on 23OCT2012), but un-encouraging that there was no further input from her/Google. -KenC |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 10.01.13 12:04 | I, too, was pretty encouraged when she chimed in. It's a bummer that we haven't heard back. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Thomas P. | 11.01.13 01:07 | Well, I'll do the follow-up for Jessica. ________________________________________ The search [ "HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8" ] does indeed (even today) return the page: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=114116 as one of the results, and it also does so even if you had used the intext:-operator. Now, looking at what you searched for versus what the page contains, then I find: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm : 8= So: Except! for punctuation, then there's an exact match in the text of that page. As to punctuation, then please see: : Punctuation and symbols in search Google has always been word-based, ignoring and stripping out punctuation (although that behaviour may very slowly be changing, going into the future, so to index & include some additional punctuation and special characters). ________________________________________ The search [ site:steamcommunity.com linux "window" missing ] Does no longer return the result: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/882965737311171740/ But the search [ site:steamcommunity.com linux "window" missing inurl:882965737311171740 ] Returns two results, which are a Greek and a Turkish variant of same (it's just the GUI of the page not being in English): And by taking a look at Google's cahce of the Greek variant, then I was able to figure out what likely went on. - Look at it by searching [ cache:http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/882965737311171740/?l=greek ] Don't see the word "window" there (?) Look again: In the right side of the page, there's a link to another discussion, w. link text seen as: "Some observations, mainly about ..." The site itself is designed, so that too long discussion titles there (links in the right side of the page) gets truncated, postfixing the remains of the truncation with an ellipsis. The site/page & browser thereby effectively conceals the full discussion title, which in this particular case is: "Some observations, mainly about UI and window management" How did I figure out the full text of that link(?) : By inspecting Google's cached version as the "Text-only version". Still want to blame Google for returning that page, which in fact did contain the word "window" at the time GoogleBot last fetched it (?) - Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question. ________________________________________ |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 11.01.13 02:11 | Thomas, you make some valid points regarding punctuation and hidden text. While I find this behavior extremely frustrating, I can see that it would be difficult and/or impractical to avoid. Still, I'm not convinced that ALL the false hits we've been getting are due to these problems. If, indeed, we're getting pages that are simply linked-to by pages with our search strings in them, then this would explain things a bit more--but I don't know if this is true, at this point. In any case, the fact remains: the results are bad. Yes, I now appreciate some of the struggles Google personnel currently face a bit more than I did, but there's a big gap between a bad "end user" experience being excusable and that same experience being good. To be more direct, though I find your information insightful, I don't see how it's *helpful.* Surely even difficult problems like some of these are can be dealt with via clever coding; few things can't, as I understand it. (I can conceive of ways to handle some of this with BASH and sed, so I can't imagine the browser equivalent being all that impossible.) |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | kencgm | 11.01.13 10:02 | I'm wondering if Google set some things back as they were? I first noticed this issue ~ a year ago, maybe more - I am a homebrewer, so when searching for beer brewing related stuff, I would always include the term "wort". That is the term for the prepared liquid before it is fermented, and being a unique term, kept my searches specific to home brewing. But then one day, I started getting "wart remover" hits included in my search- and I assumed a typo on my part, but no. WTF???!!! "WORT" NOT "WART"!!!! But I tried it today, and including "wort" (even w/o the quotes) brings up only beer brewing links. Not sure if the quoting, and "|" (pipe - OR) functions work the same as they did - I'll need to test those later. -kenc |
| (unbekannt) | 08.03.13 10:26 | <Diese Nachricht wurde gelöscht.> | |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Brent212 | 08.03.13 10:31 | Well so much for the tedious intext:"<WHAT_I_WANT_IN_THE_RESULTS>" fix for google's poor interface. Tried this search: Got result with only "late's does". No "late does". Even with the "we ignore punctuation" excuse, the search makes it fairly clear that a requirement for a result is that the page contains "late does". A second test: |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 08.03.13 12:43 | Thanks for posting your "research" results (punny!), Brent212. I've basically resigned myself to being frustrated, at this point. :-( |
| (unbekannt) | 23.03.13 07:52 | <Diese Nachricht wurde gelöscht.> | |
| (unbekannt) | 23.03.13 07:54 | <Diese Nachricht wurde gelöscht.> | |
| (unbekannt) | 24.03.13 02:54 | <Diese Nachricht wurde gelöscht.> | |
| (unbekannt) | 24.03.13 02:55 | <Diese Nachricht wurde gelöscht.> | |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | kiwirocker | 25.04.13 16:06 | Having come to the conclusion recently that I was not getting the same quality of results from Google search engine that I was used to, I was starting to become frustrated myself, error messages being the prime example. I found this discussion yesterday after posting a strong message to Ebay for exactly the same thing. I was trying to find articles with the word "stacker" in the search terms, as in "fridge bottle stacker" it returned "bottle sticker". I though I had simply mistyped it and tried again and it took me several goes with different search terms before I realised that it was simply changing the terms without telling me. It did actually, but in a non obvious (to me) way. Wasted my time as does Google these days. My other gripe with Google is that although I have my location set to my country it still persists in giving me results from other countries first. If I want to search in other, or specific countries, then I normally add it to the search terms. Why do these search engines insist that they know better than the person doing the searching, and why should I have to bother myself with all the intext,inurl etc tags which are completely meaningless to the average user. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | igel-kun | 05.05.13 12:06 | hey everyone, I'm also troubled (to avoid the word 'annoyed') with verbatim search at the moment. This would be an awesome feature if it actually worked. I'm trying to search for a pointer reference in C, so I typed '*&' into the search. Of course this does not bring up meaningful results. However, when I use "Search Tools" to switch from "All results" to "verbatim" I would expect all results to contain '*&', but the star is completely ignored, I get results containing the ampersand, but no star anywhere in sight... So "verbatim" is actually "slightly verbatim" I guess. Is it possible to have a "completely verbatim" option maybe? |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 05.05.13 12:38 | I'm hoping that the good folks at Google will fix this so that "verbatim" is possible, soon. :-) We haven't heard from a Google rep in a while, though... |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | igel-kun | 14.05.13 10:57 | Well, I can understand google for not making verbatim standard, yes, as long as there actually _is_ an option to turn on verbatim search (I think you can set verbatim as standard by using "https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1" as quicksearch link). However, the pressing issue is that verbatim search _does_not_work_ or at least, is not as verbatim as one would expect... |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 14.05.13 17:24 | Exactly! "Fuzzy" search can be quite useful, so as long as verbatim *works* and can be made default if desired, then the problem is resolved...sadly, this isn't so. I do wonder, though, why they can't just use the old Google Search code for verbatim mode (like how it worked circa 1999). It sounds like an easy fix. Can anyone from Google address this? |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | ubikyu | 25.06.14 13:47 | The mistake here, of course, is thinking that Google's users are people doing searches. Google's users are advertisers who have an interest in maximum exposure, even when that means loss of targeting. Search is now spam and has been for some time, and that deprives it of its power. Yet, the infrastructural requirements for indexing and service present a nearly insurmountable barrier to competition in a pragmatic sense. Ditch Google. Stop clicking the links. It is ridiculous to let information availability be dominated by crap pushers and scam mongers. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | A.L. Adams | 07.07.14 10:44 | Thank you. This happens to me constantly. Guess what, Google? Some of us are actually looking for EX-ACT-LY what we ask for. Some of us are detail-oriented and accurate. Academic, even. Is the internet not for us anymore? Google, I know that the general public can be pretty slapdash as a whole, and they just expect the giant machine to read their minds while they feed it garbled nonsense. I also understand that such customers' interests are pretty predictable. You can guess what they want, because it's generally what millions of other people want, or it's the most obvious thing. But what about those of us who are precise? Your search system used to find us precisely what we asked for. Why would you EVER let that go? I resent these recent anti-verbatim, anti-quotes changes deeply. They make my writing and research processes a lot more difficult on a daily basis. The only thing worse than providing a useless service in the first place is providing a useful one first, then yanking it away once customers are reliant upon it. It's like a sick joke. |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Joseph Barrera | 01.08.14 16:37 | I'm not on the search team, but I played around with this a bit. "as all authours in a#n" seems promising. Unfortunately it only finds occurrences of the original text, and no pages explaining what it means. Maybe it's a typo? |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | Joseph Barrera | 01.08.14 17:01 | Ah, I think it *was* a typo, or more accurately, an OCR error. Try searching for "as all authours" "doo saye" and you'll find: "Necessitie, the inventour of all goodnesse (as all authours in a maner, doo saye) amonges all other thinges invented a shaft heed [...]" so "in a maner" got corrupted into "in a n". |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 09.08.14 21:42 | Thanks for your input, everyone. I'm still having a problem with getting verbatim results for technical searches. Here's the most recent example (in hopes of helping the Google team diagnose the problem): intext:"usr.sh" ddns ports blocked -"/usr/sh" I've clicked "verbatim" in Search Tools. This is the result: Your search - intext:"usr.sh" ddns ports blocked -"/usr/sh" - did not match any documents. Reset search tools Suggestions: Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Any thoughts? Thanks. --Dane |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | dmutters | 09.08.14 21:44 | Of course, it's possible that there really are no such results...but usr.sh is a free provider of dynamic DNS names, and I doubt it's unheard of for someone to have blocked ports while using it. (Could still be a "PEBKAC" error, though.) |
| Re: Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? | KrippledHick | 18.08.14 08:38 | HAA, I tried this search, by breaking it down into smaller and smaller searches and ultimately got a 1 result search... - it was your comment above.
"ports blocked" "/usr/sh" **** 1 result (0.25 seconds) Search Results Why can't I do a truly "verbatim" search anymore? - Google ... productforums.google.com/d/msg/websearch/.../IBO7zNn5kzYJ Also, since this has been the top thread on their "suggestions" forum for a while, I find it likely that they're (Google staff) simply uninterested in this venue. ****** HOWEVER - the first half of the search phrase also yielded a 1 result search : intext:"usrsh " ddns ******* Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Host ... noxa.net/_mp3/muzieksaver.php?id=4799 ... 2R&a f{k8 NAc' m/^m= h#yY Gf|] [hmiy _kQI @Y[;~ vs-jQ EQe_ USrSH L+p? ...... &(NkE [5zxg %MYL pTB AaA2 ZvL^q 9LAB Ddns sZwf PH5/ [Lik %YTm< vso? ****** so much for verbatim.. <google search> define:verbatim ver·ba·tim vərˈbātəm/Submit adverb & adjective in exactly the same words as were used originally. "subjects were instructed to recall the passage verbatim" synonyms: word for word, letter for letter, line for line, to the letter, literally, exactly, precisely, accurately, closely, faithfully |
| a truly "verbatim" search depends on your interpretation of Verbatim <eyes roll> | KrippledHick | 18.08.14 09:12 | "usrsh ddns ports blocked usrsh" usr sh ddns "ports blocked" 449 all results & 56 Verbatim intext:usr sh ddns "ports blocked" 1190 all results and 56 Verbatim
About 16,300,000 results (0.79 seconds)
SEARCH: intext:"usrsh" ddns ports blocked -"/usr/sh" So - dropped the "ports blocked" phrase SEARCH: intext:"usrsh" ddns ports blocked -"/usr/sh" So, stripping it further I caught something, your hyphen was interpreted as a minus sign in front of -"/usr/sh" without it: SEARCH: intext:"usrsh" ddns "ports blocked" "/usr/sh"
so, I now break it apart, SEARCH: intext:"usrsh intext:"usrsh " ddns ?? don't remember SEARCH: usrsh ddns Search Results
realized that when google ignores hyphenation it replaces it with a blank space not concatenation.. duh. so finally - a manageable result set: SEARCH: usr sh ddns "ports blocked" intext:usr sh ddns "ports blocked" 1190 all results and 56 Verbatim BUT STAYED EXACTLY THE SAME ON VERBATIM.. I suppose this makes sense to someone.... The moral of this story ... verbatim isn't verbaitm, and an effective google search now requires multiple takes at the same string.. from different angles - with the truth being buried in differences between the results instead of the results themselves.. It's all about skinning cats. |
| Re: a truly "verbatim" search depends on your interpretation of Verbatim <eyes roll> | dmutters | 18.08.14 21:03 | Thank-you for your research, krippledhick. *sighs* I'll try to remember these tricks you've used. |
| Re: a truly "verbatim" search depends on your interpretation of Verbatim <eyes roll> | Jesse Laughlin | 23.08.14 11:39 | I just tried to search for "t.so" (twitter's URL shortener) in quotes. No matter what trick I do to try and get a verbatim search for exactly these characters in this precise order, the results I get from google include things like "Theodore T'so", or "Say it ain't so", etc. As a technical support rep, this is completely useless. I'm about ready to put some serious research into search engine alternatives. |