I think you need to toggle “Verbatim” in the search tools option for it to work, otherwise it just kinda tries to guess what you are looking for, search terms be damned.
Give the browser extension uBlacklist a try if you want to always filter out specific sites. I did that to block some AI slop and content mill sites that are good at gaming search engines.
Stop using Google?
Maybe because of inconvenience. Who’s gonna type it in front of every search they do? Maybe some more knowledgeable people will do.
Well, they supported this syntax in the past. At some point they broke it.
For sure, they didn’t bother fixing it, because only more knowledgable people used this. But yeah, still valid to complain about it then…
Try tapping the “search instead for” link.