I don't think that works anymore, I might be mistaken but I recall trying it and still getting non-word-specific results.
I tried it just now with ' "median" height ' and still got "average" and "mean" results highlighted. (Couldn't reproduce with "expand"/"extend" because I didn't recall the query that produced both.)
The first "result" for me--which heavily focuses on mean--is a Google Snippet, which I imagine could have an unrelated semantics engine and, frankly, too often (I am not saying most of the time, though) shows ridiculous garbage anyway (as it is trying to be more intelligent than computers really can currently pull off).
You probably need to enable verbatim results. Click on the Tools button (below the right end of the search bar) and select "Verbatim" instead of "All results".
As has been discussed and demonstrated many times before on HN, this doesn't always work. No one seems to understand why, but Google ignores quotation marks for some people and not others.
Moreover, how is a regular human being supposed to know this? How is this useful to someone not in the tech bubble?
Google's solution to the problem is to make people jump through a hoop. That's not a solution. That's a kludge.
I wish I could mail a postcard to Google and Microsoft to be put on some kind of "not a goddamned moron" list so they'd stop treating me like an ignorant child.
