this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Ask HN: How to do literal web searches after Google destroyed the “ ” feature? (derp.foo)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I used this quite frequently but since Google """"improved"""" it last year (there was a popular HN post complaining about this) it doesn't work anymore. Search for a domain name with quotation marks for example just recombines the contents of the domain and returns a bunch of unrelated content completely cluttering what I am looking for. Until last year it used to return no search results if there weren't any exact matches, which is the whole point.

Does someone have a work around for this phenomenal Google decision?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Partially related, but I've noticed Google slowly adopting more and more weird little "features" that change the functionality... often for the worse. The latest is the change to the little suggested "search types" for want of a better term - e.g. when you search for a product it comes up with "shopping" to switch to shopping. These now seem to be AI generated, and much worse than before... quite often I want to do a product search but the option doesn't appear, and instead I have a bizarre selection of options most of which just repeat the search with an extra word added. Weird and annoying.

[–] FuntyMcCraiger 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Searching for jackets: ✅

Searching for long jackets: ❌

I'm so used to having the second option be images. So now I often click the products tab or whatever option it thought up and I know for a fact that Google is gonna take that one misguided click and run a whole ad campaign on it.