> I find some of these changes mind boggling and can only convince myself to accept them by tell myself "hey google looks at the numbers, may be most folks just like it". Particularly the ajax search...annoys the crap out of me and finds way to enable itself even when I disable it.
Google needs to be usable by everyone. They iterate the product to make sure that most people get good search results. But this means that some people are getting sub-optimal results, especially as Google makes changes to the way search works.
Google didn't used to use stemming. Some words are now stemmed automatically. Google didn't used to substitute words. Some words are now substituted automatically. Google used to use + to force inclusion of a word, but they've dropped that and now use quotes to "force" "inclusion" of words "or phrases".
> In the past, we provided users with the “+” operator to help you search for specific terms. However, we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly.
Check my math, but I think that means that + was used correctly in only 1 out of 600 searches.
And how many millions of correct searches was that? How many millions of extra seconds are spent wrapping whole words in quotes rather than just a '+'? It could even be costing lifetimes!
Google needs to be usable by everyone. They iterate the product to make sure that most people get good search results. But this means that some people are getting sub-optimal results, especially as Google makes changes to the way search works.
Google didn't used to use stemming. Some words are now stemmed automatically. Google didn't used to substitute words. Some words are now substituted automatically. Google used to use + to force inclusion of a word, but they've dropped that and now use quotes to "force" "inclusion" of words "or phrases".
People reading HN might think that + is easy enough to use, and "enclosing" "every" "word" in "quotes" is stupid, but Google does have the numbers. (http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your...)
> In the past, we provided users with the “+” operator to help you search for specific terms. However, we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly.
Check my math, but I think that means that + was used correctly in only 1 out of 600 searches.