Correct me if I'm wrong; When I'm searching for (unquoted) "Canadian equivalent to SOPA Bill". I'm getting results about Soap, Telenovela, Spas, Dishwasher Soap, TV shows (and 1 related hit). The result, as you mentioned, could be ranked independent of Ads, but the Ad spectrum is wider (Soaps, Spas, Soap operas, TV shows, etc...) [I'm not getting any in this particular case].
If it's restrictive search (quoting each word - sigh!), the search result quality is slightly better (first 3 hits), but the potential of Ads is also low.
I know you put the user first - but wouldn't you speculate in my case?
Ads has a very sophisticated system of matching ad topics against queries. That's how they make the big money. :) I work in search though, so I don't really know anything about how it works except at an extremely high level. I'd be really surprised if that sort of effect actually happened though.
I'm not sure that logic works. You're assuming that the Ads are matched to the query in the same way that results are matched to the query - that a more restrictive query necessarily translates into fewer ad matches.
There's another possibility which is that the ads are the query and the search query is in fact their match result. In that case, adding or removing quotes within the search query might not have any impact on the ads being shown.
Don't know which way it works, but it seems to me the latter would be better for showing ads without having any negative impact on search results.
Correct me if I'm wrong; When I'm searching for (unquoted) "Canadian equivalent to SOPA Bill". I'm getting results about Soap, Telenovela, Spas, Dishwasher Soap, TV shows (and 1 related hit). The result, as you mentioned, could be ranked independent of Ads, but the Ad spectrum is wider (Soaps, Spas, Soap operas, TV shows, etc...) [I'm not getting any in this particular case].
If it's restrictive search (quoting each word - sigh!), the search result quality is slightly better (first 3 hits), but the potential of Ads is also low.
I know you put the user first - but wouldn't you speculate in my case?