I have a web program that collects search string from Google/Search and stores it in the database for analysis. Now, sometimes the data comes to me as: 1) one%20two 2) one+two 3) "one+two" The first I assume is broad search since the %20 is merely spac, and for the 3rd one I assume it's an exact search. Now, I know the search string coming to my site are either in quotation or not. Meaning, it's a phrase or exact search. So, what's the difference between one%20two and one+two? Is one broad while the other is phrase/exact? Or, are they both phrase?
I think, 1,2 and 3 are phrases where 1 and 2 denotes broad searches and 3 stands for exact match searches. It seems your crawler is replacing dashes or underscores with "+" sign as it should provide result replacing spaces with %20. Normally if you see in IE it will show spaces as %20 in URL but Firefox will replace same with double dashes "--" I can not recall much.. but this is what I remember.