I'm not sure if my memory is playing tricks on my, but I've found quotes unreliable. Google will spit out "close" suggestions that have nothing to do with what I requested, despite using quotes.
Google also happily returns results which do not fulfill even the "close" suggestions: e.g. I ask for three words, Google searches for those three words, and returns a bunch of pages that contain only two or one of those words. Google, that's not what I asked for.
Google's attempts to tweak my queries and also return results that don't fulfill all requirements makes it much less useful to me, because they usually backfire. I don't want my queries tweaked -- I want exactly what I asked for, and only what I asked for. If I made a mistake, I can figure it out and fix it myself.
> I'm not sure if my memory is playing tricks on my, but I've found quotes unreliable. Google will spit out "close" suggestions that have nothing to do with what I requested, despite using quotes.
I noticed the same a few months ago. If you want an exact match you have to click on "Search tools" >> "All results" >> "Verbatim".
For what it's worth, I assure you that putting a "query" "term" in "quotes" is identical to the retired +plus +sign +operator.
I would be very curious, if you set up Verbatim search as your default search engine in your browser, how often you have to "fix" it, and if you ever find it easier to see what Google makes of your non-verbatim query. I'd especially be interested in how often the thing you're searching for doesn't really exist on the web, and so Google is replacing "no results" with "off-topic results."
Google also happily returns results which do not fulfill even the "close" suggestions: e.g. I ask for three words, Google searches for those three words, and returns a bunch of pages that contain only two or one of those words. Google, that's not what I asked for.
Google's attempts to tweak my queries and also return results that don't fulfill all requirements makes it much less useful to me, because they usually backfire. I don't want my queries tweaked -- I want exactly what I asked for, and only what I asked for. If I made a mistake, I can figure it out and fix it myself.