Why exact match search isn't working in Gmail?

[ad16]

Hi everybody,

I need to perform an exact match search in Gmail for the words "code de déontologie" (in French).

According to this page (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en), putting a phrase between quotes should allow me to perform an exact match search.

If I type "code de déontologie" in the search bar, it doesn't only find the emails containing this specific phrase but also all the emails containing the word "de", which is one of the most frequent words in French. The result : that search simply finds the entirety of all my emails, because they all contain that very frequent word. So the result of the search is literally useless.

If I type code déontologie (without quotes), same thing happens : it finds all the emails that contain the word "de" even though the word "de" is not even in my search query... The search is hallucinating a word that I'm not even searching for. Same thing : the result is literally useless because it finds the entirety of all my emails.

So basically, Google's support documentation (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en) is wrong or outdated because it's impossible to perform an exact match search.

I also read online that using double quotes could work, but it actually gives me the same result as simple quotes.

Any advice on how to perform an exact match search in Gmail?

Thank you very much! Have a nice day!

[marcbauchet]

duplicate topic: 
https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Workspace-Q-A/Gmail-EXACT-PHRASE-search/m-p/756927
and yes it is very stupide

[marcbauchet]

I just came across a partial solution that kinda works in some cases (sadly that's the best google can offer it seems), which is to write a + (plus sign) attached before your keyword, so for example searching for +catchup will list you all emails with the exact word catchup, in text and in attachments.  Without the + in front of catchup i was  also getting catch up and possibly more variations, so that's an improvement compared to nothing
Alas this doesn't work :
- with phrases, so you can't look for +"catch up", that gives me the same results as "catch up" and catch up, with different capitalizations and the word up, etc.. 
- with some other words according to some mysterious rules, like for example +themost give me the, most, more, etc...

so far i still haven't come across any documentation or official response from Google.
looks like the whole process is in the hands of some half hallucinating AI... 

[ad16]

Hi,

After some tests, it appears that the problem isn't related to the search function but is related to the highlighting function in the list of search results.

When I search "code de déontologie", Gmail actually searches for the emails that contain this exact phrase and doesn't return any email containing only the word "de". But when Gmail displays the list of emails that fit the search query, I can see in the emails' preview that the word "de" is highlighted, as if Gmail searched that word individually. This highlighting behaviour is misleading because we tend to think that Gmail didn't perform the search properly even though it did.

It still requires a fix! Thanks!

[AnarchyM]

It is not a highlighting issue. Not solely, anyway. When I search 'class action' I get hundreds of results, haven't found one yet that contains the exact phrase 'class action.' However, all results contain either 'class' or 'action' or both. I searched the body of the emails as well as the headers. Same goes for "class action" (double quotes as opposed to single).

[pkotwas]

The official Google Support documentation is outdated.
Try putting a + (plus) between each word.
Your search prompt should look like this:    "code+de+déontologie"

Then it should only show results having that exact phrase.