I read the article, and the HN comment it links to, but didn't find an example in either, and it doesn't match my experience. Does someone have a concrete example when using quotes results in pages not containing the search terms?
I work for Google Search, and as I shared elsewhere, quoting still works. It really does. If you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know, and we'll debug. Typically the reasons people believe it is not working is because:
1) text appears in ALT text
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text)
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat"
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)
I believe you! (see my other comment in response to the original one).
But it seems people don't (my original comment is being heavily downvoted because of this). And although they can't submit even one example, the fact that they don't believe you is obviously a symptom of a bigger problem.
For some reason, Google is losing the trust of power users.
No results containing all your search terms were found.
- few results with quotes, not more without quotes:
Your search did not match any documents.
It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search
Tip: Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking
for. For example, "cake recipes" instead of "how to make a cake."
- no results with quotes, but results without quotes: Google says that the search with quotes didn't find anything, and that they searched without quotes instead.
I have yet to find any instance where Google corrects the inside of quotes without any warning.
Google has been regularly ignoring quotes for at least 5 years, probably longer. That was one of the biggest factors for me dropping it as my main search engine.
