Negative and combined operators [+Focus tip]

Something I find myself doing quite regularly is searching while excluding some results (rather than, for instance, searching for a website that has a specific term in the domain).

I used to do this mainly using DDG where I can enter -site:exclude.com or -site:exclude1.com -site:exclude2.com (could be simpler in my opinion if I wouldn’t have to type the -site: for every single website, but it does the job). I noticed that Mojeek isn’t supporting this negative operator. You can use the “-” symbol to exclude certain words in your query, but you can’t combine this with operators (at least I couldn’t in my experience).

Luckily, there’s Mojeek Focus. Focus has an option to exclude domains, so when I need to exclude a domain or a few domains for a query, I create a Focus for that.

This only works, though, with domains. I haven’t found a way to exclude the other search operators. Perhaps this could be a feature request? Or does anyone have any other suggestions?

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I’ve raised a feature request for this operator; if others are interested in it, or if we get similar requests elsewhere, I’ll add to that feature request so it’s given a priority that matches how many people it would be beneficial for.

I’m guessing here you have certain terms that you want to exclude for a given Focus which don’t change? If so as you’ve stated that isn’t a feature with Focus at the moment, but normal operators should work in conjunction with Focus i.e.

https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=london&foc_t=Weather

vs

https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=london+-planning&foc_t=Weather

2 Likes

I meant that I can create a Focus with domain exclusion for a certain query (and later remove that Focus), kind of like performing the negative operator for a query with just some more hassle to do it. But this only works with domain exclusion. I can’t create a Focus to exclude a certain word from a domain or exclude certain words from the results.

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I too would love to have such a feature, like using -intitle:excludeword can be helpful in trimming off-topic results but more precise than -excludeword. For example, if I search for articles about a Mojeek feature, those that include “Google” in their title would almost always be off-topic, but some on-topic ones may include “Google” in the body of their articles.