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

      • cobysev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        131·
        2 days ago

        Google works if you put a minus ( - ) in front of the word you want omitted, without a space.

        For example: correctword -wrongword

        It will show searches with “correctword” but omit any search results that also have “wrongword” in it.

        EDIT: But yes, don’t use Google if you can.

        • mmmm@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          10·
          2 days ago

          I don’t know, here it used to work all the time no matter what, but in the last few years not so much - for example when I search ‘thing I need to buy -mercadolibre*’ it will show ‘mercadolibre’ results regardless. For technical, scientific or nerdy queries it still almost always works

          *mercadolibre being some sort of an “argentinian amazon alternative” with really aggresive seo and shitty practices and shameless greed too

        • OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish
          72·
          2 days ago

          Nah, Google stopped taking search queries literally a while ago.

          Now it takes your query, uses some opaque (and probably now AI-infested) algorithms to decide what you want based on both the query and all the information they have about you, and then instead of showing you exactly what you searched for, it shows you what their algorithm thinks you want (after you get past the first page of mostly sponsored results and what Google wants you to want).