How can I get Google not to ignore hyphens in a search phrase?

Question

I sometimes use Google to determine how often a particular phrase or a spelling appears on the Web. For this type of search, I'll put the phrase in quotes, so that Google doesn't ignore small words (like in/and/the).

However, even when the search phrase is included in quotes, Google seems to ignore hyphens. For example, Google seems to return the same results for "editor in chief" and "editor-in-chief".

Is there a way to get Google to distinguish between "editor in chief" and "editor-in-chief"?

Thanks.

Notjusta - Your suggestion is the same as putting the search term in quotes, which is what I already do. It does not solve the problem I'm describing.

Honey - You say "Searching for "editor-in-chief" does return it with hyphens in because I tried it out." Yes, you're right. But it also returns links to the phrase without hyphens. That's not what I want. What I need is a way do a search for "editor in chief" which returns only links without hyphens, and a separate search for "editor-in-chief" which returns only the links without hyphens.

Answer 1

Neither of the first two answers addresses your question. Regardless if you use single quotes, double quotes, or advanced search, you are correct in that you get the same results. My only advice is to write Google a sternly worded letter asking them to update their programming algorithms to recognized hyphens as unique characters....

Answer 2

If in the search box you put speech marks around the words you are searching for, the exact words will be returned.

Searching for "editor-in-chief" does return it with hyphens in because I tried it out. See below

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22editor-in-chief%22&meta=

Use speech marks to get exact phases of words. Those without hyphens are the nearest match but the hyphens are still displayed like you want.

Answer 3

advance search *exact phrase match