Exact Searches on Google

why Google should make exact searches default

[allanp73]

I always thought that the easiest way to make Google's results more accurate would be if they make exact searches the default results. I wonder if the reason they don't do this is to show off the size of their index. I always found that when I do an exact search using "" that the results are much more relavent. Often it is the quickest way to weed out the junk. How does everyone feel about this? Does anyone else use exact search when searching?

[mack]

I tend to agree with your on that one. I think the problem with using exact searches as default is that not many typical users know exactly what they are looking for. If Google gives them a broader choice then they are more likely to find what they where looking for. I think they like to leave the exact search for the more experienced searchers.

[vitaplease]

allanp73,

the exact search is not always the best.
One word sequence difference, or one stopword changing proximity, and you might miss the best result.

I would enjoy to be able to adjust the exactness of proximity percentage wise.

mack,

>not many typical users know exactly what they are looking for

you are right, although suprisingly 53% of searches can seem to be containing three words [webmasterworld.com] , but then those are probably mainly done by power users.

I would not be suprised if Google would introduce the long awaited categorisation suggetion if people only use one word for searching.
Similar to Altavista's Prisma: Search for "computer" [altavista.com] and they suggest amongst others two word alternatives. When Altavista launched this they said this was amongst others to educate searcher to be more precise in their search query.

But then I could imagine the Google adwords select department would veto any offered clustering above the serps, because the sponsored link listings on top might get less attention for certain extremely popular one word queries. :)

[shelleycat]

Personally I use a mix of phrases and single words when searching and would find exact searchs as the default kind of annoying. For example, I tend to search for something like:

 "keywordA keywordB" keywordC "keywordD keywordE" 

where I'm looking for those three elements in any order. But then maybe I'm weird in that I often use longish search strings?

I can definitely see it's use as an option that can be turned on and so it could easily be set as the default for those who want it.