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Hi luk, Exact search not working in auto-suggestions is not a performance issue but a deliberate move not to extend it to auto-suggest at this stage.
The thought process is as follows:
How does exact phrase search work - The end user has to complete the entire text or query within quotes. The objective is to find exact inputted text within quotes. Once the inputted query is complete, user clicks and enters SERP page with exact phrase search results.
Auto-suggest enables end user to find relevant results in shortest possible time, irrespective of whether inputted query is complete or not. This also means that exact inputted texts/queries would not necessarily be shown in auto-suggest results. The user does not have to go to SERP page.
Now for exact phrase search (supporting single sentence) to work in Auto-suggest, when you have completed a search text/query, there would hardly be any differential time benefit a user would get while viewing the results on Auto-suggest. There would hardly be any time lag between surfacing the results on Auto-suggest and SERP page (because end user has completed the query and one click to SERP page cannot contribute to large time differential).
However, going forward, when we support multi-statement search in exact phrase search like "orange apple" Banana, extending exact phrase search to Auto-suggest would create differential time benefit for users. And we will look towards enhancing it then.
But as of now, there is no added benefit. Please let me know about your thoughts.