Quoted Google searches are becoming even more helpful

Based on user feedback, Google has made a very important change to how it displays quoted searches on Google Search, and I am here for it. For those that don’t know, quoted searches consist of putting quotes around a word or phrase to ensure that the search results include that exact match. This has been a search hack for as long as I can remember and one I frequently use when searching for something specific.

When performing a Google Search, the results include snippets below each one that describe the content on that page. Previously, these snippets didn’t necessarily show the text within the quoted search and therefore were not a good representation of how accurate the results were. However, a new change will ensure that the snippets will include and be formed around the quoted text and display this in bold type on desktops. This change will help locate where the quoted text occurs on the page before clicking on the results.

Google says this change had not been done before because sometimes the quoted text appears in odd areas of the page, which didn’t make for great snippets. An example used was when the quoted text appears in the middle of a menu, so the words around it are just more menu items and not something that can be used to construct a description of what the page is about.

We’ve heard feedback that people doing quoted searches value seeing where the quoted material occurs on a page, rather than an overall description of the page. Our improvement is designed to help address this.

The Keyword

While this is mostly a tool used by power users, Google says it’s best to search first in natural language, without operators like quotation marks. Also mentioned was that back in the day, using search operators was needed because search engines were not as advanced as they are today and sometimes needed a little help. However, nowadays, Google Search is set up to look for both the exact words and related terms and ideas. This way, even if you have the wrong term, Google can still pull off related results based on the context.