Google-search – How to Google search for big stories without a keyword restricting me

Just announced by Google, searching for special characters is greatly improved.

The catch? You need to search for at least two or three characters.

Now for queries containing sequences of 2-3 special characters such as [== vs ===] and [+=], Google will return results on the meaning of these sequences in programming languages.

For example, if you’re searching for the meaning of [c++17], you will get results for the well-known programming language instead of c17, which brings up a Boeing airplane. Additionally, organization and product names that include punctuation, such as She++ and Notepad++, will return more accurate results.

+= is even called out specifically as an example string.

As with all Google improvements, this is likely rolling out in stages, and may not be available in all languages.

I can't help you with the list of any “top” rating, but!

This tool by Google gives you ability to see the amount of searches for any phrase. The default setting is so-called “broad” match data — so, if you key in recipe, you will see amount of searches for all queries that have “recipe” in them, in any form.

It won't give you a rating, but it will show you the absolute amount of monthly searches, possibly filtered by language and/or country.