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Comment by garyclarke27 | Hacker News Reader

I agree, this is extremely annoying, Google should add an option - for their users who know what they are doing - to always do a verbatim search. I also still detest their mobile first format on iPad, again why on earth don’t they let their users choose Desktop format, if they prefer this. I have to use slower than Safari iCab Browser to get around this.

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&tbs=li: is the magic incantation to insert into your search bookmark parameters to force verbatim every time

I swear that google once supported minus as a search term, but can find no evidence to back up my memory.

The minus option did once filter out results with that word, and could be amazingly helpful to find less used meanings of primary search terms. But it did go away about the same time as the + operator.

The minus operator still works for me. I use it frequently to exclude domains (`html -site:w3schools.com`).

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

> Exclude words from your search

> Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. For example,

    jaguar speed -car

- seems to still work for me.

   roses -flowers

returns chocolates and a theatre.

    roses

returns the flowers.

Perform Google search -> Tools > All results -> Verbatim.

It’s not sticky though. And there’s no way to force it on every search on safari for instance

Depends on your browser, but for example, in Chrome, you can set your default search in chrome://settings/searchEngines for the omnibox search. Mine is:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&filter=0&num=100

You could easily add the verbatim parameter as well.

Nothing similar for safari?

Not on iOS at least (chrome app and safari).

Sadly ddg doesn’g have a clear verbatim mode either, but it’s not as bad as google search yet.

Ah - yeah, mobile search sucks, right now.

I mean, in some ways, it's great. I can get a song lyric or a football score or a movie ticket very easily.

But research? Forget it.

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