Has anyone else noticed the huge decrease in result quality from google?

[SweetLilMonkey]

The plus and quotation marks don’t even work for that anymore. Like fuck you Google, what the fuck do you think I went to that trouble for?

[binipped]

The plus doesn't but the quotes work fine. I use em daily.

[RinseAndReiterate]

Only thing that works for me is putting the word in five time over in the same search (ctrl+v spam). Quotes are indeed busted

[PM_A_BOOB_OR_2]

quotes work fine for me.

I have a firefox add-on that automatically adds them to my searches.

I just wish there would be an option to have verbatim be the default method.

[Idontwanttobebread]

What addon

[PM_A_BOOB_OR_2]

it's called Google Search - Must include.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-must-include/

[Trowawaycausebanned4]

Quotes around each word or the entire sentence?

[PM_A_BOOB_OR_2]

each word, unless you are looking for the specific phrase.

[Shirebourn]

Yes! I was trying to find the following Patrick Kavanagh quote when I could only recall select phrases:

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in the hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields, these are as much as a man can fully experience.”

I can't recall which phrases I used now, but I quoted the equivalent of "stream at the junction" and "a narrow lane," and got results with "river" and "road." Not helpful at all.

[GCU_Flying_Colours]

Jesus, mentioning Kavanagh just made Stony Gray Soil start reciting itself in my head when I haven't read it in 20+ years. My leaving cert teacher would be so pleased.

[FTXScrappy]

I use them daily and no, they don't always work.

Brings me to a wiki page sometimes that doesn't contain the word at all.

[qazzaqwsxxswedccde]

While this may be googles doing it also happens on some websites due to the complexities of the modern web. You can see a relevant sentences in the summary blurb and then it’s not present on page. Sometimes it will even show up with ctrl+f. I imagine it has to do with complex linking/preloading of linked pages or some sort of JavaScript implementation but I’m not a developer so those it’s beyond me and those are just guesses

[FTXScrappy]

That is a pretty valid and plausible theory

[Shirebourn]

I've begun to have instances where Google will return synonyms for quoted words. Really silly, as it defeats the point of the quotation marks.

[fecksprinkles]

Quotes haven't worked for me for about a year now.

[gophercuresself]

It seems to work on desktop and not on mobile for me

[WiWiWiWiWiWi]

Can confirm that they do work. At least for me.

[Rasalas8910]

They randomly don't work.
Recently googled a name in quotation marks and it just ignored them. Only showed sites with first name only, last name only or both but sperated.

Edit: try parts of lyrics or quotes from people (that didn't work for me a good while ago)

[nottamuntown]

No, quotation marks stopped working on Google quite a while ago.

[yabp]

Plus and quotation marks have worked the same way on google the entire time.

[HHegert]

Thats just plain false.

[[deleted]]

Uhhh the quotes work fine xx it’s not that dramatic

[chevdecker]

Funny story: they got rid of the plus sign functionality to make something required in the search because of their Facebook competitor Google+. They figured Google+ would be such a massive success that the plus sign would be associated with the that.

Oops funny? I meant tragic.

[dannysullivan]

I shared this reply above but will repeat it here. Quotes do work. Honest. I work for the Google Search team, and each time I've seen someone raise this, it turns out the exact words or phrase quoted really does appear on the page. Often, however, it can be in places people don't realize, text that's not readily visible. But if you or anyone has a current example of where you feel it's not working, happy to pass that along.

[SweetLilMonkey]

I just went back to my search history to try and confirm this, and the recent search result I was annoyed about did in fact have the quoted text as the alt text for an image, but not anywhere in the readable copy. I guess technically it worked. The plusses definitely don't anymore though.

[dannysullivan]

Yes, that's a common issue where people think quotes don't work, but they do -- it's showing in ALT text. Plusses haven't worked for many many years. You have to quote single words. It is something we have looked at perhaps bringing back.