[thewizardofaus]

This topic (or a variation of it) comes up quite frequently on HN.

I agree with your observations. Google search seems to completely ignore search terms in quotation marks. It's like the search favours showing somewhat relevant results instead of nothing at all.

[missedthecue]

Under normal usage, google will search for synonyms of the keywords you typed. But I have never experienced it ignoring quotes.

[avereveard]

If your term is specific enough it will ignore it the first time around even if in quotes, and you have to click on the "search this term for real" link underneath

Google search is however personalized per user account in mysterious ways, so there's that at play as well

[Semaphor]

I rarely use Google, but my experience was always that quoting still worked.

[dcminter]

A few weeks/months back on a similar thread a googler posted that the quotes will always be honoured, but the text they are matching won't necessary be part of the visible page.

In general when I've landed on apparently unrelated pages and checked this it's been true.

This is often an anti-feature though - if I search for an exact match I probably don't want pages that don't visibly include it.

I am strongly reminded of the days when AltaVista searches had started turning up more and more spammy garbage and this young upstart with a funky name turned up to challenge them.

I reckon Google's crown could be grabbed by the end of the decade. Sooner if they're slow reacting to a challenger.

[politelemon]

This isn't my observation, I use quotation marks frequently.