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In the 2020s, with Google using machine learning and other fancy stuff to find search results, how can I search for an exact phrase, and only that exact phrase, in Google search?

I'm aware that enclosing a phrase in double quotes is supposed to search for that exact phrase. However, as at August 2022 this no longer seems to work.

For example, I was searching for a particular Azure command, "az acr run" and I was getting lots of results like "run az acr build", "az acr build is always failing", "unable to run az acr check-health". az acr build and az acr check-health are completely different commands from the one I'm interested in, az acr run.

Is there anything better than enclosing a phrase in double quotes or is that the best we can expect?

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  • What about using “+az +acr +build” for the query text? Aug 21, 2022 at 3:20
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    @Giacomo1968: Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it but the results said "Results for +az +acr +run (without quotes)". The results were less accurate than those for "az acr run" (without the + signs).
    – Simon Elms
    Aug 21, 2022 at 3:51
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    Can't reproduce here. Sep 4, 2022 at 2:00

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