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I'm not trying to gaslight anyone. And what would be the point? To say something works if it demonstrably doesn't work?

Yes, I tried this for some of the presets before I replied. It worked. It still works.

My sincere apologies for not specifically testing custom date range option as well. I should have; you are correct. That won't work. I'll pass it on to see if there's a way it can. My apologies again.

If you need to do this another way, what I also said works. Do it in the search bar using the before/after command. Just quote all the words, and that's the same as verbatim.




That is absolutely not the same as verbatim, and you need to do some empirical tests on your end, before you state things like this.

Take a look here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094

It's like you're just spouting Google propaganda, without validating what you're saying. Just like with vertabim/date range, which has been a thing for close ot a decade, which Google has received endless reports about, this too does not do what you say.

Your responses are akin to those canned responses one gets when you post a bad review. "So sorry, please contact us here at this email address.", which of course is all about impression, and results in nothing ever happening.

This has been going on almost a decade, yet oh what, no, haha is your response.


Verbatim mode means we search for exactly the terms you put into the box. Quoting terms means we search for exactly the quoted terms. That's what I meant by them being them same.

So if you did this search in verbatim: [search for this]

It's the same as: ["search" "for" "this"]

in terms of the instructions we're getting on what to retrieve -- look for content that has all of those words and only those words. No spell check. No synonyms. Just those words.

The ranking of the results might differ, because we probably use slightly different ranking systems when using verbatim versus quoted words. But in either case, the retrieval requirement is the same. Results should have all the required words.

I don't really see what the link above is saying to somehow refute all this. That link is about a quoted search for ["eggzackly this"] and nothing to do with verbatim mode. And it says that it found those two words in that order with punctuation...

Which is what I explained elsewhere in this (now huge) thread. But to give it again:

Typically the reasons people believe quotes are not working when they are 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)

In the [eggzackly this] example, that's what was happening as the poster saw -- we found those words separated by punctuation, which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched.

Personally, I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages.

Most important -- quotes SHOULD work as you and others are expecting. We WANT them to work that way. That's why we spend time looking at these reports saying they're not. I have spent lots of time doing just that. We find the matches. But if anyone believes they aren't working, and the reasons involved above aren't happening, let me know. We'll get on it. We want them to work as expected, and we want everyone to feel they're working that way.


For additional clarity, quoting has always, always, always been different than +, and verbatim. When you(Google) removed +, so that 'google+ searches' could work without interference, quoting was already a thing, and people were just told by some airhead googler "Oh, but quoting is the same! Just use that!"

It wasn't. It isn't. I never has been. Ever.

Verbatim was introduced to replicate that lost + functionality, after massive outrage at the inability to find search results. The fact that you, and other Googlers still think "" is the same as verbatim/+, when it doesn't even show the same search results, is highly, highly questionable.

To be beyond blunt, you're wrong. You are completely and totally wrong. +/verbatim and "" are not the same thing.

Please go away, and learn how your own product works, before commenting on it, ok?


I'm pretty familiar with how the + operator used to work and why Google dropped it, having written about it at the time it happened (spoiler, I wasn't happy it was dropped): https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-...

At the time, + was used to require that something be present. Quotes were used to require words appear in a particular order. You could do a search where you quoted a phrase, but that didn't necessarily require it to be present (as I recall). If you absolutely wanted the quoted phrase to be there, you had to quote and put a + in front of the quoted phrase. So yes, they were different things.

When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.

With +, then with quotes and with verbatim, it's about what you retrieve. Verbatim says get these words or words and only those words. Quoting says get these words and only those words (and only those words in a particular order, if you indicate that). Just like + used to mean get these words and only these words.

The ranking of results might vary when you quote versus verbatim, but what you're asking to be retrieved is the same to us.


At the time, + was used to require that something be present

When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.

No, quoting did not take its place. At all. That's why verbatim was introduced, after outrage. Google claimed it did, but it still aliased. It still decided to provide results without quotes.

Again, this is why verbatim was born. From that "Google no longer gives precise results, ever" angst.




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