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As I reported at Search Engine Land via Google Operating System - Google has decommissioned the tilde (i.e. ~) search operator from working.
Google's Dan Russell, a Search Research Scientist, said it was removed because of lack of use. Similar to when Google dropped dozens of other search features and interfaces (to name a few).
Dan from Google told Alex from GOS blog:
Yes, it’s been deprecated. Why? Because too few people were using it to make it worth the time, money, and energy to maintain. In truth, although I sometimes disagree with the operator changes, I happen to agree with this one. Maintaining ALL of the synonyms takes real time and costs us real money. Supporting this operator also increases the complexity of the code base. By dropping support for it we can free up a bunch of resources that can be used for other, more globally powerful changes.
Some folks are upset by the featuring going away - it was a great way to do keyword research for many marketers.
Forum discussion at Google+.
Update: Matt Cutts shared another reason why this was removed.
Comments:
Andrew Biviano
06/25/2013 03:32 pm
Barry, do you have a replacement (ubbersuggest?) for finding semantically related keywords?
Brandon
06/25/2013 04:10 pm
I do! It's called a thesaurus.
Andrew Biviano
06/25/2013 04:22 pm
Synonyms do not equal semantically related keywords
Ben
06/25/2013 04:28 pm
Lsikeywords.com I think is the url if memory serves, it's good for semantic KW research
Ben
06/25/2013 04:29 pm
Lsikeywords.com*
Fedor
06/25/2013 05:10 pm
Sweet! Maybe another search engine can pick up the massive amount of people that use that operator and beat Google. lulz
michael
06/25/2013 11:47 pm
You may also try http://seoeta.com/lsi-keywords/
Brandon
06/26/2013 03:26 pm
It was a JOKE
Andrew Biviano
06/26/2013 04:09 pm
Thanks Ben!
Andrew Biviano
06/26/2013 04:09 pm
Thanks michael!
reputation buffalo
07/09/2013 05:43 am
the last thing I missed this much was google squared
rankyacomau
08/21/2013 06:39 am
Yes Bazza, all good things must come to end, and seriously "Maintaining ALL of the synonyms takes real time and costs us real money" there you have it, its all about the bottom line. In this case, its about the bottom line of SEO's. What's next Google?