Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 February 16

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February 16

Forcing Google to search for all terms (without quotes)

I'm not sure if this is new or if I've just never noticed it before, but I tried a Google search where I want results containing all of the terms (even if that's zero results) and a search in quotes is not useful for the search I was trying. When I did that search it gave me many, many results but at the bottom of most was the legend "Missing: Term1 Term2". I then tried the search again but this time placed a plus sign next to each term; I got the same results. How do I force Google to search each term? Thank you 173.68.77.60 (talk) 15:30, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

By "term" do you mean word or phrase? If the former, then you can put a plus sign before each word, such as +Term1 +Term2. If the latter, I'm afraid you're going to have to use quotes. Also, try the "advanced search" function, which will let you fill out a form and structure your search appropriately. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi :MjolnirPants. I don't understand your answer since I explained that I already tried placing a plus sign in front of each word and it made no difference. If there's no way to do it, then that's the answer, but I was hoping for some clarity. To recapitulate, say I wanted to search only for pages that contained all of the terms grapefruit goat grandiloquent and green but not in any order – and without having Google find pages that contain some but not all – is there a way? As I said I tried +term1 +term2 +term3 +term4 but it made no difference. It still returned results for pages not containing them all. 173.68.77.60 (talk) 22:16, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

You're trying to use google like a library reference search, which isn't what google is designed to be. Google is designed to parse the sort of language typical users use to try to describe the results they want, and present results which are relevant to that. Bing and Yahoo do the same thing. In the earlier days of the web, the difference between web search engines and the existing technology known as search engines was the subject of a lot of tech articles and opinion pieces. The way they work is really quite different. So one thing I would suggest is simply telling google what you want, such as Grandiloquent green goats eating grapefruit or try to think up similar descriptions that would contain all of the phrases you want.

One thing I will tell you: If google said it found no results containing all of those words, then it found no results containing all of those words. Finding an obscure way of phrasing search terms to produce the exact function you want will not change that, mostly because adding the plus signs produces almost exactly the behavior you want. When it found no results, it chose instead to show you results similar to the results it calculated it might have shown you had it found any. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:27, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Google search abandoned the plus a very long time ago [1]. Often suggested to be relating to Google Plus but I don't think this was ever confirmed [2] [3] and AFAIK whether due to the failings of Google Plus or whatever, you still have to use quotation marks before the plus if you want to actually search for it and they don't use it for anything else either.

Anyway whatever the reason, you've had to use quotation marks since. I don't know if you understand how to use quotation marks properly. They do not have to be used for phrases and you aren't restricted to one. If you just want to search for all the terms exactly, you use "grapefruit" "goat" "grandiloquent" "green". This is all described in Google's own help for search operators which isn't a particularly long read [4]. IIRC, the plus operator didn't really work any different, for example "goat" will not generally return goats or "green" greens etc (or if it does, they will be very low priority), but the + worked the same. If I'm remembering wrong and +goat did return goats etc with resonable priority then there is AFAIK no way to completely replicate this behaviour other than using your own complicated searches like "goat" OR "goats".

Incidentally this page is perhaps not surprisingly the first search result for me for that search. (It's quite high up even without the quotation marks.) The next ones are almost all dictionaries e.g. [5] is second although I do get [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12].

If for some reason you don't want to use quotation marks, I guess you'll have to develop a Greasemonkey or plugin for your browser that will automatically convert plus into quotation marks and then also modify the page so it looks like you used plus.

Nil Einne (talk) 23:45, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Well then. Go screw yourself very hard with something very rough, google. You suck. I've been using the + operator as recently as last week, with apparent success. Now I can't trust google, I'm just going to have to resurrect Altavista. But the ability to do it is still there, just enclose each word in quotes. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:58, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Did you not notice, as the OP did, that it doesn't work as expected? Also IIRC and I think I noticed this in one of the stories about abandoning the plus, they did warn you when you tried using it in the early days of them abandoning it. Nil Einne (talk) 00:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

No, the results were exactly as I expected, at least on the first page. It returned results with all of the words at the top of the results, then returned results missing one word or another, noting which word was missing in the result. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

For the record, I rarely searched that way, which explains why I never noticed that it didn't work right every time. I usually use google the way it was intended, by describing my desired results in common terms, because that's what google is good at. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:07, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually I was mistaken. After some more testing I've found in some cases at least, Google does search for terms with + in front of them when you add it, although as with general searching and the reason for this question, they will not only search for terms with + in front. So yes, I guess their desire to allow + to be a normal part of the search term was most likely the reason it was abandoned. For example, try grapefruit goat +grandiloquent green will return some results which use '+grandiloquent' (mostly they are dictionaries and also have +green etc rather then Google Plus stuff), but not exclusively. Anyway I also wanted to clarify that you don't have to use quotation marks for every words, you're free to only use it for some as with the plus. For example grapefruit goat "grandiloquent" green. Nil Einne (talk) 00:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I thought the plus sign had been deprecated due to its use on Google+ (though admittedly, that article says nothing of the sort). Matt Deres (talk) 12:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)