Google users who use the + operator nowadays for their searches will see a notification at the top notifying them that the “+ operator has been replaced” and that they now have to use double quotation marks to search for an exact word or phrase in the search engine.

Instead of searching for technology +news in Google, users now have to use the search phrase technology “news” instead for the desired result.

What if you want multiple exact words or phrases included in your search phrase? Then you need to use double quotation marks for all the terms. Say you want to search for technology and both news and blog included on each of the resulting pages. You would then search Google for technology “news” “blog”.

A Google Rep on the official Google Search support forum confirmed the change.

We’ve made the ways you can tell Google exactly what you want more consistent by expanding the functionality of the quotation marks operator. In addition to using this operator to search for an exact phrase, you can now add quotation marks around a single word to tell Google to match that word precisely. So, if in the past you would have searched for [magazine +latina], you should now search for [magazine "latina"].

We’re constantly making changes to Google Search – adding new features, tweaking the look and feel, running experiments, – all to get you the information you need as quickly and as easily as possible. This recent change is another step toward simplifying the search experience to get you to the info you want.

The question here is if the new method simplifies search. Users now have to use two symbols instead of one to include exact single word searches. It simplifies search if an exact search phrase needs to be included on the websites in the results, as users would have used double quotation marks in this case anyway for the desired result.

Some users on Webmaster World have criticized Google for that move as it can now happen that pages appear in the search results that do not include the exact phrase. While the pages are mostly relevant to the search query itself, it can happen that the exact term does not appear on said pages (e.g. some results for the query “new york train timetable” do not contain that exact phrase.

OperaTor is not complicated to setup and use. You only need to download the binary executable for Microsoft Windows and unpack it on your system. No installation is required which is great for mobile use. You could for instance copy Operator to your USB stick and run it from any computer that has Internet access. Great for internet cafes and other public computers. Just start the OperaTor.exe and all three required applications will be started automatically. Just use Opera as usual from this point on and rest assured that no data will be saved on the local computer.

It is a good idea to test the connection and make sure that you are really surfing anonymous. The easiest way would be to check that with a script that displays your IP. I have written a basic script that displays your IP. Compare that IP to the one when you are not using OperaTor to know that the service is working.

The developers are updating OperaTor whenever a new version of Tor, Privoxy or Opera come out. Make sure you check the site frequently to always use the latest version of OperaTor.

Update: Operator has been discontinued. The developer has created a new program, called Operator YAPO.