Searching the web (was: Re: Having trouble finding a word in multiple files

[Chris Green]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 01:02:11PM -0000, Jonesy via ubuntu-users wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:52:43 +0100, Peter Flynn wrote:
> > On 18/06/2020 08:52, Chris Green wrote:
> >
> >> Yes (although this has now crept a long way away from the original
> >> subject) I find that Google (and other search engines) are getting
> >> steadily less and less useful.  I want a search engine that searches
> >> for *exactly* what I put in with an implicit AND between all the
> >> terms.  That's what Google originally did and it's why it was so much
> >> better than most other search engines at the time because it was the
> >> only one that did the AND.  All the others ORed the terms which made
> >> refining a search almost impossible.
> >
> > DuckDuckGo seems to support this:
> > https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax/
> 
> I believe Google will still do the AND'ing if you _ask_ for it:
> 
>    [ foo AND bar ]
> 
It still does, sort of, as in all the terms you put in are ANDed by
default.  The results for 'fred bloggs' and 'fred AND bloggs' are the
same as far as I can tell.

> Also, don't forget to quote phrases with spaces
> 
>    [ foo AND "bar the door" ]
> 
Yes, but as I said, that doesn't guarantee that "bar the door" is in
the search results, just that it probably (or something like it) is in
the results.

-- 
Chris Green