Surely simpler soultion would have been to respond to a search for "+this is a +search" with:
Showing results for this is a search
Search instead for +this is a +search
As google does for other "typos".
Failing that, a replacement for + would be welcome. I can't imagine many people type, for example ^word or =word - allowing use of a symbol that indicates promotion of that word word in the search terms, they way + did.
The difficulty will be reeducating the (presumably quite large number of - even if proportionally a small percentage of googles user base) people who have been using + in searches for the last 10-15 years (I'm almost positive this concept existed in other search engines before google) that + isn't + any more, and please use this other symbol instead.
Showing results for this is a search Search instead for +this is a +search
As google does for other "typos".
Failing that, a replacement for + would be welcome. I can't imagine many people type, for example ^word or =word - allowing use of a symbol that indicates promotion of that word word in the search terms, they way + did.
The difficulty will be reeducating the (presumably quite large number of - even if proportionally a small percentage of googles user base) people who have been using + in searches for the last 10-15 years (I'm almost positive this concept existed in other search engines before google) that + isn't + any more, and please use this other symbol instead.