In a significant improvement to how it handles search queries entered by the user, Google has announced that it will no longer ignore certain punctuation marks contained therein.
Until now, Google ignored punctuation marks, such that searching for IPL and #IPL gave the same results. This has now been 'fixed', so the queries give different results as you would expect (see screenshots below).
This is especially good news for Twitter fans, who've worn down the @ and # keys on their keyboard, trying to 'mention' someone or 'hashtag' something. Now searching for specific Twitter user or certain topics should yield better results.
The complete list of punctuation marks added as part of the search update codenamed 'Deep Maroon' are '%' (percentage), '$' (dollar), '\' (backslash), '.' (dot or period), '@' (at-the-rate), '#' (hash or pound), and '+' (plus sign).
Google has rolled out 50 improvements to search as part of the March update. Other notable ones targeted at end users include more-efficient auto-complete and live UEFA Champions league as well as tennis scores in search results.
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