When a user enters a search term in quotes, should the search engine search what is within the quotes exactly, or should it perform some analysis on the query like a query without quotes?
For example, should the query "U.S. of America"
match US of America
? Similarly, should the query "foo-bar"
match foo bar
? When these queries are not in quotes, I would assume the answer is yes, they should match. However, when placed in quotes, the user is suggesting that they are looking for an exact match. The question is just how exact.
I understand that this is more of a design choice than a programming choice, but how would I even answer this question? If asked, my users probably wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Is there an easy answer here?