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?

  • Izzy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year 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.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      IIRC a Google engineer once explained that exact matches do always work but can be confusing because they also apply to non-text elements. If an img alt text contains an exact match, that will show up as a result eventhough a text search on the site won’t find the phrase.

    • bpalmerau@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      I search Google for “Music behind the scenes”. Because the first word is music(?) Google gives me four songs with some of the keywords, but not in phrase order. Then it gives me seven YouTube videos, then one website that actually contains the phrase, and in fact refers to the videos I’m looking for.

      But what it absolutely refused to give me, no matter how hard I tried, was this: https://youtu.be/7r01e_SZ5ic?si=GdOpoP8dBp372yjg

      I presume this is because the videos aren’t monetised? Anyway precision score 11/30, and as for recall, even if I click on ‘videos’ the five of them that have the exact phrase in the title don’t appear at all.

      • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Your problem is that “Music behind the scenes” returns hundreds of results of movie and game soundtracks. Because this is a super common phrase. It doesn’t just look at video titles, but descriptions too.

        I instantly find your video, first result, with: "music behind the scenes humour" site:YouTube.com

        Obviously if I leave "humour " out it will rather show me all the behind the scenes videos with millions of views. Instead of a random video with less than 1000.

        • bpalmerau@aussie.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          This is my complaint. It ranks popular videos with the title words out of order, over videos with the words in phrase order when I’ve used quote marks as a command to only return results containing the phrase.

          I also assume that for both Google and YouTube, content they want me to see is being ranked above content I choose. I am the product, not the customer, and to me that’s not acceptable in a search engine.