What's happened to Google searches?

[ruthruss]

Hi all, a bit random, but I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered what I am currently encountering? I have an ancestor (a writer and publisher from 1884-1924) whom I periodically Google search as he was not famous but reasonably well-known. I search with his name in quotations plus keywords in order to whittle results down, so: ["J W Allen" +Longmans -Shakespeare] or ["J W Allen" +Norfolk] and usually get several hundred hits that I weed through for random mentions of him or his writings. However, now that AI appears to be embedded in Google, I am suddenly faced with 0 findings with these specific searches.

Has anyone else come across this lately? I've done it for years with no problems.

[Erato]

I also have several ancestors who, while not famous, were fairly well known at the time and who were often mentioned in newspapers, academic articles and books.  Like you, I periodically Google them to see if anything new has come up.  I just did a check on one of them ["Robert W. Logan" Micronesia] and got the usual sort of hits that I always get.

I also did a Google search for your man ["J W Allen" +Longmans -Shakespeare] and got nothing.  But when I did the same search without the + and - signs, I got results.  So, I checked "Robert W. Logan" +Micronesia and got nothing.  There seems to be something about that + sign that is throwing things off.



Edited to add:  And I'm glad you asked that question because, while looking at the Robert W. Logan results, I did find something new and quite interesting - a Master's thesis on missionary ships which  informed me that  Robertīs son Arthur (age 13) was on the maiden voyage of the missionary packet Morning Star IV in 1884 when it sailed from the shipyard in Maine down to the Straits of Magellan and then up to Hawaii.  I knew that Arthur had joined his parents in the Pacific in 1884, but I didn't know that he had gone via Tierra del Fuego; I had always just assumed that he sailed from San Francisco.

[ruthruss]

Thank you very much for your insights, and hurrah for new information! Glad you found something new    I'll have another go tonight.

[still_looking]

Using tools, advanced search, I tried your first set of criteria and the search was reformatted as
[Longmans "J W Allen" -Shakespeare]

Does that help return your original results?

S_L

[RJ_Paton]

Although the + sign was originally used to indicate terms that must be included in the search many systems (including it would appear Google) have switched to a search criteria that simply interprets the + sign as a space.
Instead of the plus sign use AND, in place of the minus sign try NOT

trying these on your original search turns up quite a few entries summed up by AI as follows

The search results indicate that J. W. Allen was an editor for Longmans, Green and Company, primarily associated with editions of
Shakespeare's plays, such as King Richard II and Coriolanus

[oldohiohome]

If you ever want to get rid of the AI result, you can click on "more" and then on "web."
Or use https://www.startpage.com/ which bypasses the AI completely. I have no connection to them.
Or there are extensions for Firefox and Chrome that let you bypass AI and make the web search your default. They require a bit of technical knowledge to install and it would take too long here to explain how. Google it if interested.

[Daisypetal]

Hi,

I found that if you put a space between the + or - sign and the following word it seems to work eg;

"J W Allen" + Longmans - Shakespeare rather than "J W Allen" +Longmans -Shakespeare.

I have always searched this way so hadn't noticed the difference but I will keep it in mind for the future.

Regards,
Daisy