In some case I want result relative to my location, or other info, and in other circumstances I want generic results. In some case I want result sorted by most recent first, and others I don't care or want the oldest info. In some case I want results in my mother language and others I want English results as well. Etc. etc.
My feeling is that google provides far too few search adjustment knobs and is spoon feeding me with what google thinks that would be relevant for me.
The strange thing is that all major search engine are just copying google's behavior on this aspect.
I mean, this must be a clear benefit to Google, they've removed almost all the abilities to target one's search and just about the only thing left appears to be using quotes ("") and that is only used as a weak signal for what is put in the SERPs.
There used to be a variable "pws=0" or something that gave non-geographic, non-personalised results.
Quotes stopped working ages ago in my experience. Very often I’ll search for a thing in quotes only to follow the top few results where the quoted term appears nowhere using ctrl+f. We are totally subjected to what they think we want. DDG has started doing this too especially if there aren’t that many results.
I expect some genius realized that a zero result page results in the user trying another search engine. But gaslighting their users with subtly incorrect results tricks the user into continuing to refine their query...
In some case I want result relative to my location, or other info, and in other circumstances I want generic results. In some case I want result sorted by most recent first, and others I don't care or want the oldest info. In some case I want results in my mother language and others I want English results as well. Etc. etc.
My feeling is that google provides far too few search adjustment knobs and is spoon feeding me with what google thinks that would be relevant for me.
The strange thing is that all major search engine are just copying google's behavior on this aspect.