I've actually stopped trying to search google for things anymore, because it almost always tried to be clever and totally missed the point. Sounds like I should try "verbatim" too!
The searches had to do with real things as well as programming.
-has uses a weirdly named something
- and Google fuzzes it to something it has a million results for
I think this has happened twice, despite of me using both doublequotes and verbatim.
I've reported it and they've fixed it shortly afterwards but it is really annoying.
Just about all the results were for vegan activism, without a hint of it being a joke/phrase.
The top result when switching to "verbatim" mode was the joke, standalone, correcting "plants" to "vegetables". (Searching for the correct phrase in either mode got me to a zazzle page with a shirt identical to what I remember, but that's not really relevant to "use verbatim search!")