Most of the time Google does a good job of helping me find what I’m looking for. But all too often I can’t find any way to get meaningful search results because it insists on ignoring punctuation and capitalization.
Made up but realistic example: Say I remember reading a book with a character named Big-Dog. I want to find it so I do a search. Do I get any hits that contain Big-Dog? No, I get Big Dog, BigDog, big dog, Big Dogs, etc. Putting it in quotes gets the same results.
Is there any way to tell Google that I want it punctuated and capitalized exactly the way I typed it, and that if there are no matches just tell me that–don’t offer me something “similar”? Or is there another search engine that can do it?
Using the guide I linked to and the false search criteria you gave I would type this.
Book: Character: +Big Dog
Once you know how to work within the system Google is probably the only engine you’d need.
Another for instance. If you are really, really anal about getting what you want then be anal about how you type in what you are looking for.
Ex. Periodic Table: sounds like scandanavia – and you get Scandium.
You just have to know what to type.
All that being said…if you type something and get it wrong, I wouldn’t automatically expect Google to say, “we got noth’in” it will always give you something.
The first three hits for that search are:
List of fictional dogs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clifford the Big Red Dog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Big Dog Ink (comic book publisher)
None of which contain the word “Big-Dog”, which is what I want. The point is I know exactly what I want, and if it’s not available I want the same result as if I typed in a bunch of random words in quotes. That being:
Your search - “Big-Dog” - did not match any documents.
I’d just like there to be an advanced search option that exact means exact, don’t try to tell me I might have meant something else. I know what I meant, thank you very much.
Sure. This I understand. But understand that sometimes I, and the OP, want a true, literal exact string search, the equivalent, say, of a “grep” command. It does not appear that Google offers this functionality (which, I can understand based on how the database search is set-up and organized.) Does any other search engine?