This is why we need more variety in search engines. Google does not want you doing "advanced" and "unusual" things with their service anymore, because they're scared that SEOs will use this to manipulate their search outcomes. But of course every SEO targets Google anyway, so the "plain vanilla" results are just as terrible!
The main reason they block this is because it's used by malware as in infection vector - makes it easy to find vulnerable hosts running outdated webapps for example.
Part of me thinks it's not their responsibility to do this. It's pretty paternalistic behavior. It seems typical of Google these days, though. I don't understand why they seem to be actively opposed to power users, all across their products.
I don't understand why they seem to be actively opposed to power users, all across their products.
Power users are the ones who know how things work; they are difficult to manipulate and mislead, will use their knowledge to consume content in the way they want (blocking ads, stripping DRM, rooting devices, etc.), and are in general not docile and "obedient".
In summary: power users know how to control their destiny, and this is something companies like Google are opposed to, because those companies want to be the ones in control.
I feel for some companies this has backfired in the long run. Take for example Blizzard, a video game company. They used to have a perfect reputation but over time it has tarnished due to catering to the masses.
World of Warcraft became more and more accessible over time, and eventually reached a point where it was so accessible that no one wanted to play it since it wasn't fun and there was nothing to achieve.
Diablo 3 was meant to appeal to the mass market but it was really obvious to everyone that the game was horrible since it wasn't actually meant for anyone in particular. They literally had design choices that were obvious to teenagers that it was a profit-making machine.
I haven't really been a video gamer in years but AFAIK they don't have the same reputation and are just an ordinary company now due to changing their model from "amazing product" to "mass market product".
No, the main reason I know about is that advanced operators are more resource intensive than regular queries. Not blocking these would affect search for everybody else.
That, of course, also tends to take care of spammers, malware as you described and just plain buggy bots. Those can be tackled with additional measures, but first and foremost Google cares about search latency. (And quality: higher latency reduces quality, too.)
These days I have to wait longer simply because of Google's "auto-search" functionality and their heavy use of JS. It's like it's trying to guess what I want to see before I'm even done inputing a search query-- which I'm sure is very convenient for novices, not so much if you're a power user and looking for something specific. Other search engines (Bing, DDG) don't have this problem, of course.
I think Google have just stopped even trying to maintain their "flagship" Search service - that the only way I could explain how their search quality and website responsiveness could decline to the level of the old Yahoo.com and Altavista. And don't get me started about the sorry state of their Google Groups archive...
You're right, in theory, but that's not how things work in reality at scale. Remember that every search query propagates through at least a thousand machines.
The fact that they're restricting this feature across the board suggests that they're more scared about SEO efforts. Malware-related searches would be easier to spot as an anomaly and filter out (and the article states that they do this in some cases).
They don't restrict it across the board, I use many of these operators all the time without issue, the only time I run into difficulties is doing very specific "Google dork"-like queries repetitively.
That's exactly the SEO use case though. I mean, it's not exactly a secret that grey/black-hat SEOs want to do this, the problem is that the limits Google places on it inconvenience every power user too!
I must be missing something here - How would this impact SEO? Blackhat SEO is primarily about generating false backlinks to your site, often through blog and comment spam. Search queries to Google will have little if any impact, especially using fancier operators.
