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Yes you’re right on exact matches.

For basic keyword searches. It’s not uncommon for search users to want inexact equivalencies, synonyms or conceptually close search results. (Search for cold, get back rhinovirus). Every user and use case has different definitions/tolerances of “this term appeared on the page”

It’s a complicated topic, without simple solutions. I wrote about it here.

https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2018/12/07/synonyms-b...

2 comments

If users want equivalencies then they shouldn't use quotes, which are for exact match. Let's not play semantics here. Search syntax is clear - put things in quotes, get 'exact match' in return. Equivalent words are not exact match. Get smart with me, decrease usability for me. This is what is happening.

We can argue whether there is place for more operators, or whether it's better on average for an average user to still be "outsmarted" by the engine, but it's clear what's going on - these aren't exact match results and the results often have zero relevance with what user is looking for precisely because the user knows the specific word WILL appear on the page they need and a page without that word WON'T be what they need. I don't know how much clearer we can be :) It used to work (or seemed to). Now it doesn't. It frustrates some people. That's it.

Yes you’re right. I missed the “” in your comment and failed at reading comprehension

But there's more to it anyway.

I've interpreted searches. Database searches, not web pages, but my problems should apply to web search too: For example, a user who types "märz 2019" with quotes might mean that string, in German, or might on the other hand mean that particular month and use the quotes to eliminate february 2019, march 2018, etc. And people enter the exact string they remember in the hope of avoiding a sea of mismatches, but then they either mistype or don't remember quite the right wording.

This has nothing with the quality of the search results. This belongs in the "did you mean" box at the top.

It's extremely common to become very frustrated and angry when you cannot get an exact match for the search terms you've entered after explicitly indicating to the search engine that you want an exact match and nothing else.

Don't mess with my search terms! Bring exact matches back! Only show pages that match the search terms!

Verbatim mode as default?

The amount of automatically created synonyms is getting out of hand, it decided the name of where I work is a synonym for another company in the same business that's 15 miles away

I never figured out what verbatim does. It certainly doesn't seem to force exact matches.

Verbatim mode does not resolve the issue.

From the customers point of view, those two things are pretty similar.

Verbatim mode has been broken more than once, too :-/

Is it possible that the times you're frustrated that verbatim search isn't working are the same times there are no decent results to your query anywhere on the internet?

It seems to me the main failing of Google is they have no good way to say "We understood your question, but the answer isn't on the internet".

Instead they just return a set of not very relevant results.

at least Google seems to be better at that than DDG