Automatic Exclusion of Common Words not working?

"in" is a very common word and was not included in your search

[edavid]

If you search: blue widgets in my city
you get the message that the word "in" was left out of the search.

Yet the word "in" shows in the line that says:
Searched the web for: blue widgets in my city

And if you search: blue widgets my city
you get different results.

And if you search: "blue widgets" "my city"
they are different yet again.

Even the search "blue widgets in my city"
yields different results.

The word "in" in my first search DOES seem to matter to the search. It does not seem to be excluded.

Am I missing something?

[WebWalla]

It's excluded from the search (i.e. Google doesn't try to match the word to text on the page in the results), but it affects word proximity, which is why the results are different.

[edavid]

Got it. Thanks for your help.