I’ve been surprised to see that Google has altered many things lately. Some have been adding the search categories and image size to the blue bar which displays the number of search results. These I’ve found to be quite ok, but there have also been some other changes.

While it’s no news that misspelled searches are shown as the correct version, even when we’re talking about brands and such. Also, strangely the correct version is displayed on top of even strict matches to the misspelled version (even when the sites are completely legit, check out youtubr).

However, Google has a new approach, which I have also accepted initially as logical but now, not so much. Google has the strict search operator, which basically only displays content which completely matches the search phrase (except punctuation which is usually ignored). And Google has always believed the people who use the strict search operator don’t really know what they’re doing, and has always suggested removing the quote marks.

One thing I never understood though is why they never included a link to the search without quotes, for those who really did not know how to search like that. Well, my prayer has been answered and we get a search without the quotes link.

However, Google has gone the extra mile, and included a few very stupid features. The first one is that if there are no matches to the strict search Google automatically gives you results without the quotes, which can be confusing, since you expect strict and you get a bunch of completely unrelated ones…

But the most annoyingly moronic part is that Google also shows you searches without the quotes even when there are results with the quotes. This means that rather than showing you the few strict matches Google feels that you’re stupid and shows you the less strict ones. Which is beyond the point of a strict search…

It’s basically a trade-off, exchanging the usefulness given to power users with help to less tech savvy clients who don’t know how to search. My question to Google however, is who on Earth doesn’t know what the quotes do but uses them?… Most people I know have no idea of the feature and have never used it. They just type the words and expect the magic… What I have seen though, is people using + signs or AND operators, which are really unnecessary.

So Google, please don’t screw us over by making it more user friendly… What happens now when I want to search for lyrics? Will I get Viagra websites and beer commercials?… IMO this is really dumb and I hope it’s just a small beta, which will be disabled in the future because it really sucks…

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