Wouldn’t it cut down on search queries (and thus save resources) if I could search for “this is my phrase” rather than rawdogging it as an unbound series of words, each of which seems to be pulling up results unconnected to the other words in the phrase?

There are only 2 reasons I can think of why a website’s search engine lacks this incredibly basic functionality:

  1. The site wants you to spend more time there, seeing more ads and padding out their engagement stats.
  2. They’re just too stupid to know that these sorts of bare-bones search engines are close to useless, or they just don’t think it’s worth the effort. Apathetic incompetence, basically.

Is there a sound financial or programmatic reason for running a search engine which has all the intelligence of a turnip?

Cheers!

EDIT: I should have been a bit more specific: I’m mainly talking about search engines within websites (rather than DDG or Google). One good example is BitTorrent sites; they rarely let you define exact phrases. Most shopping websites, even the behemoth Amazon, don’t seem to respect quotation marks around phrases.

  • corroded@lemmy.world
    83·
    6 months ago

    I’m going to break with what most people are saying and offer the suggestion that search engines are actually doing a decent job. If my mother searches Google for the phrase “Can you please show me a recipe for apple pie?,” she’s probably going to get a recipe for apple pie. If I search google for “c++20” “std::string” “constructors”, after I skip over the ads, I’m most likely going to get a web page that shows me the the constructors for std::string in c++20.

    Ad-sponsored pages and AI bullshit aside, most search engines do still give decent results.