What the heck has happened to Google search?

[sajman99]

Ah, thanks for the info guys. So mouser's hard work is paying dividends.  

It's very nice to now see relevant DC discussion threads show up in Google.

[mouser]

yep, posts on the forum are now in google an hour or two after they are made, which is very cool.

[ewemoa]

 

[nosh]

Am I really late to the party or did Google just drop the + operator from their search syntax? Is it some bizarre decision related to their Google+ service? (I feel silly even suggesting that.)

I noticed for the first time today when I got this message at the top of the search results:

The + operator has been replaced.
To search for an exact word or phrase, use double quotation marks

So now double quotes signify both "whole phrase search" and "required in results"?
What if I want to include a phrase in my search that doesn't necessarily have to be in the results? How do I frame my search query then? WTF, Google!

Update: OK, I see it is a recent development.
http://www.ditii.com...erator-discontinued/

The plus operator was useful for single words and it was intuitive, considering that the minus operator is employed to exclude results that contain a certain word.

Wasn't simplicity one of the virtues that helped Google become a household name? Looks like it's time to seriously start looking at alternatives.

[Stoic Joker]

Update: OK, I see it is a recent development.
http://www.ditii.com...erator-discontinued/

The plus operator was useful for single words and it was intuitive, considering that the minus operator is employed to exclude results that contain a certain word.

Wasn't simplicity one of the virtues that helped Google become a household name? Looks like it's time to seriously start looking at alternatives.

-nosh (October 25, 2011, 05:12 AM)

Great, that'll put a dent in my Google-fu. I frequently do did searches for "this phrase"+"this phrase" ... Now I'm not sure what to use. What a PITA.

[Carol Haynes]

It just means that Google want to throw even more crap results and advertising in your face.

I am finding Google less and less useful as time goes on - you almost always get confronted by dozens of irrelevant results to wade through.

Try looking for a hardware manual ore a device driver and it doesn't matter how specific you are in your search terms you are confronted by pages of annoying websites trying to charge you for things that are freely available from the manufacturers websites.

Now they just made searching for specifics even harder!

Any suggestions for good alternatives?

[IainB]

Any suggestions for good alternatives?

-Carol Haynes (October 25, 2011, 06:59 AM)

Well I just did a search for "best search engines" on mamma.com and got a wall of the sort of rubbish that you referred to, but there were a couple of specific hits that at least had titles that reflected the query, though I didn't look at them in detail as I was in a hurry.
So, you might find an answer to your Q there.

[mahesh2k]

Duckduckgo.com is good alternative and Bing search results are much better these days.

[nosh]

Duckduckgo has 0 results for a search query that got 200,000+ hits on Bing and 400,000+ on Google.  
I love the minimalist interface + customizability but I'd feel like I was constantly missing out on stuff if I made it my primary search engine.

Bing seems like the only viable alternative, ATM.

[mahesh2k]

Which is that query ? I'm asking this because they're taking data from both BIng and Y!BOss. So either the sites in that query are filtered by yegg or maybe there is some other reason.

[nosh]

dog vaccination swelling +betnovate

[I feel the need to explain - Sparky routinely gets a bump after his shots, I was 99% sure the vet has prescribed Betnovate for it, but wanted confirmation.]

I initially thought DDG didn't support the + operator, but that's not the case. I'm sure the difference is not that big, still, it's enough to stop me from using it.

Edit: Funny! If I just swap words and turn the query into:
dog swelling vaccination +betnovate  - I get hits.

Apparently, it's the word order that's important but I can't find any place to toggle that setting. Does NOT inspire confidence!

Edit2: More weirdness: Clicking the query (in this post) from Firefox doesn't get hits but on the iPad it does.

[cyberdiva]

Your saying that clicking on the query in Firefox got no hits made me click on it in Firefox.  Sure enough, it got no hits, but it did offer a suggestion:

No results. Try:
dog vaccination swelling betnovate

And that got lots of hits, including this very discussion in DC.  So perhaps DDG doesn't support the +?

[J-Mac]

I ran into this in Google last week and had a fit. Double quotes cannot replace what the plus sign did; it can give you exact phrases but you could use the plus sign to ensure Google included a word that they were aritrarily tossing out for results. The reason? They are coming out with searches specifically for Google+ and the plus sign in the search query will automatically make it a G+ search only. Truly sucks!

Another wonderful change to their search page: The "cached" link will no longer appear with the results but will only be available in the "Instant Preview", so you'll have to hover your mouse over the preview icon, allow it to expand to the right of the results, and then find the "cached" link in there. Of course this is "for our own good", don’t you know...

BTW, I would love to use Duck Duck Goose - the concept sounds nice, but I don’t get nearly enough search results when I use it. Hell, I may be back to Yahoo soon for my searches.

Thanks!

Jim

[nosh]

And that got lots of hits, including this very discussion in DC.  So perhaps DDG doesn't support the +?

It does, try a simple query that's sure to get hits with a plus. Also, the second query I listed has a plus in it.

[mahesh2k]

I got hits from both firefox and chrome. I don't know what is the issue with browser. I'll pass this on their official forum.

[NigelH]

Problem is, even the Google scrapers tend to be slow - although Scroogle is pretty good.

Any suggestions for good alternatives?

-Carol Haynes (October 25, 2011, 06:59 AM)

I've also used Ixquick on occasion with fairly positive results

the world's most private search engine

[Carol Haynes]

Where do people find these search engines.

Thanks Nigel I will give it a go.

[Stoic Joker]

Where do people find these search engines.

-Carol Haynes (October 26, 2011, 08:13 AM)

Google?

 

[mahesh2k]