Edit: i’ll update this list of search engines that are alleged (up to you, the Reader, to verify) not to respect special search operators:

  • owoarchist said Google

Keep your previous search terms but add “NOT” then whatever the word thats coming up that you want to exclude from search results since its not relevant to what you’re looking for

I just intuited and put this to use a moment ago and it works and helped filter down things substantially

    • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      62·
      5 days ago

      I feel like they’re sort of universal to the point if you have to ask that question then what you’re using now (if you’re asking from $ having experience of it not working) isnt worth it and to try a different search engine.

      I dont want to say what I use, vut I hope I’m making sense. Just try whatever you are cool using but try examples like with “keyword” or -dontIncludeTerm or +includeTerm

    • LillyPip@lemmy.caEnglish
      42·
      5 days ago

      All of them.

      e: perhaps I sounded flippant. I didn’t mean to, so let me apologise and clarify: this has been a thing for a long time, and every search engine implemented this a long time ago. It’s pretty standard. There are some regex style things you can do in pretty much all of them, too, partly because it’s sort of free in the codebases they all use deep down. I don’t want to be too technical, but the ‘x NOT y’ thing is so basic, all search engines of any size (even homegrown ones on one-off websites that aren’t using SDKs for whatever reason) implement this basically on day 1. I’ve implemented this myself in homespun proprietary search engines within homespun proprietary software decades ago.

      There are a bunch more ‘commands’ like this, many of which are universal.

        • LillyPip@lemmy.caEnglish
          31·
          5 days ago

          That looks like a bug. It used to work and should still work, unless they broke it in some instances for some reason.

          That is a bug report wondering why it isn’t working for that user, not a statement that it doesn’t work on Google for a reason. If anything, that bug report says it has and should work on google.

          e: and the response says it works for at least some people, with only 15 people ‘agreeing’ with the report. Considering their hundreds of millions of users, 15 is microscopic. It’s a bug from 2 1/2 years ago. Could be something weird with a 3rd party browser (that bug report doesn’t give any details on what OS or browser the user was using). I just tested it and it’s working for me. If it’s not working for you, you should submit a bug report, because it should.