Okay, except the quote operator doesn't work as described and hasn't worked that way in at least 10 years. "Did you mean x?" No, asshole, I put what I meant in quotes.
I work for Google search. It does work as described. If you have an example you're comfortable sharing where you feel it doesn't, I'd be happy to have the team look into it.
To be fair, very little of what Google search does works as described lately. Google is not about retrieving search results, it's about displaying advertising and promoting content that is related to your query, but not your specific query. Google search hasn't worked as described for at least 10-12 years.
Is it possible that some variations in results are caused by variations in what phone vs desktop, apps or browsers send to google when people search?
FYI, I have my Windows Desktop Firefox homepage set to Google Advanced Search: https://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en&fg=1 and I never (almost) logon to my google account when I search. It would be nice to add "site or domain:" exclusions.
Next time one comes up I'll post back. I'd say I almost always try it in conjunction with the + operator, and my sense is one or the other is often ignored.
If you're using that with the +, yes, + is being ignored. It hasn't been an operator for years. That's what the quote operators are for. If you search for something in quotes, that's the same as it used to be when you'd use +. IE, if you used to do this:
[+find +all +of +these +"words and phrases"]
After the + operator support ended years ago, in favor of quotes, this is how you would (and still should) do it:
