Sometimes when I use exact matches like "keyword1" "keyword2" I see results that contain some of the matches but not others. Is there a search engine that only shows results with all the exact matches exactly as they are written?

  • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I hate them all. A good searx instance that stays active honestly gets me better matches in general.

    I’ve tested with an open source offline 70b LLM recently. Like I was searching for some very specific industrial adhesive products by application, and where I had no idea what existed. When I searched DDG, I got echo chamber ads for consumer grade crap. The AI gave me several brands and products. Some were not real or were close but not quite right. Searching for these on DDG was curious. It paused for a couple seconds longer than usual before each result was given. It felt like, “please wait while we expand your environment…achievement unlocked.” Suddenly it knows all about this stuff and generates thousands of results. So yeah, you’re not alone in feeling like search engines are total garbage now. This AI may not be 100% reliable but it is better than the SEO idiot.

    • laylawashere44@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 years ago

      Yep, I’ve used LLM to find historical primary sources for research essays. It of course made up some stuff and gave a few irrelevant sources, but it did find me sources I didn’t know about.

  • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Sorry I can’t help, I’m just facepalming at all the people who are saying it works with quotation marks and minus signs. Bollocks works.

    Anyway, maybe SearX? At least when I try to search for something, it never finds anything rather than try guessing what I meant, so maybe it’s more strict in principle. Of maybe the usefulness depends on instance, I’m not sure how it works.

  • Norgur@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    Google and most other search engines will Resort to a less strict approach when there are no or very few results for your term specified.

    • BrerChicken @lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      This thread has me all kinds of confused. If you want the search to look for only exact matches, you have to put the phrase into quotations. This is really basic knowledge, but I don’t see anyone actually discussing that. If you don’t use quotations, then you’ll get lots of different variations of the keywords, instead of the exact match. That works for lots of different search engines, and even searching through documents sometimes, depending on the program/app.

      • Norgur@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Well, yes and no. Most search engines will start to ignore the quotations when there are few or no search results.

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      I always use DDG but neither they support exact match nor exlusions with the dash. They only have a slight effect, but they don’t actually work.

  • Izzy@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Do you have an example where using keywords in quotes doesn’t work on Google? I think if the top results don’t contain both keywords then it doesn’t exist in its index.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Hasn’t properly for several years, in my experience. If there aren’t enough results for it, it will just generalise the search, sometimes without telling you that there were none matching those specific terms. It used to.