Computer Help and Support

LAS14

(14,682 posts) Sun Nov 22, 2020, 10:20 AM Nov 2020

Why don't quotes in a Google search always work?

If I search for "monty python," I get the expected hits. Nothing on snakes, for instance.

But if I search for "soup-rice" I get over a million hits, all visible ones for chicken rice soup. I wanted to find out what a DUer meant by "soup-rice" as a response to a post.

I've bumped into this problem frequently.

tia
las

7 replies

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Highlight:

Why don't quotes in a Google search always work? (Original Post) LAS14 Nov 2020 OP

I don't know the post you're referring to, but was soup-rice a word play on surprise? Arkansas Granny Nov 2020 #1

Huh! I bet it was. Thanks. nt LAS14 Nov 2020 #5

Get rid of the hyphen in soup-rice. Laelth Nov 2020 #2

But if I just limit the search to those two words, I get a million chicken rice soup recipes. LAS14 Nov 2020 #6

I get a similar problem when trying to omit a word.. In the past if I put in a space and a negative mitch96 Nov 2020 #3

I think putting quotes around one word can prevent that. David__77 Nov 2020 #4

Good question! CloudWatcher Nov 2020 #7

Arkansas Granny

(31,826 posts)

1. I don't know the post you're referring to, but was soup-rice a word play on surprise?

Reply to LAS14 (Original post)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 10:24 AM

Nov 2020

LAS14

(14,682 posts)

5. Huh! I bet it was. Thanks. nt

Reply to Arkansas Granny (Reply #1)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 11:45 AM

Nov 2020

Laelth

(32,017 posts)

2. Get rid of the hyphen in soup-rice.

Reply to LAS14 (Original post)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 10:36 AM

Nov 2020

Because of the hyphen, Google sees that as one word. Your quotation marks aren’t affecting the search at all. A search for “soup rice” (two words) will limit the search to Google articles that contain both words.

-Laelth

LAS14

(14,682 posts)

6. But if I just limit the search to those two words, I get a million chicken rice soup recipes.

Reply to Laelth (Reply #2)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 11:46 AM

Nov 2020

What I want DOES have a dash in it.

Another post in this thread suggests that I'll never find it because it's a word play on surprise. But I'd still like to know how to search for it.

mitch96

(14,653 posts)

3. I get a similar problem when trying to omit a word.. In the past if I put in a space and a negative

Reply to LAS14 (Original post)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 10:42 AM

Nov 2020

sign that word would not show up in the search.. like Democrat -republican
Most times it works and nothing with republican shows up. Every so often it would show up.. werid
m

David__77

(23,869 posts)

4. I think putting quotes around one word can prevent that.

Reply to mitch96 (Reply #3)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 11:06 AM

Nov 2020

It’s not intuitive that the quotes would make a different in the case of one word- my recollection is that it does.

CloudWatcher

(1,923 posts)

7. Good question!

Reply to LAS14 (Original post)

Sun Nov 22, 2020, 02:54 PM

Nov 2020

And ... it seems that the answer is that you can't! Google treats hyphens as word-breaks in the source material. Seems like a bug, but it's the way it's designed.

An old query for something very similar: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/3544867?hl=en

And ... I checked and there are very similar problems with both Bing and DuckDuckGo.

It seems like a bug that should be fixed, either at Google or one of their competitors

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