I was looking for information on https libraries. On google https will return a bunch of results for http, which is totally useless to me. I tried both +https and "https" and neither seem to affect the results. Is there some other trick I'm missing?
+ is no longer a Google Search operator. Quoting a word is.
What query did you do, specifically, and what kind of HTTPS libraries are you looking for?
If I do [ https ] almost all links on the SERP contain the literal string HTTPS.
If I do [ "https" ] every link on the SERP contains the literal string HTTPS.
In both cases, the results are nearly worthless. So, you must be trying something like
[ "https" libraries ]
Again, that returns only moderately relevant results (all the matches contain https literal text, but it's not a nice list of https libraries).
Being more specific is going to guide the engine to understand your intent more clearly. For example
[ "https" programming library for C++ ] finds a nice list of HTTPS libraries, including this link about half-way down (personally, I would prefer that was on top):
C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming - Stack Overflow
stackoverflow.com/questions/.../c-c-libraries-for-http-programming
Sep 15, 2010 - C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming [duplicate] ... What well known C/C++ libraries are out there that could allow one to implement servlets, or at least provide most of the essentials for .... Self contained http/https library ...
Note the search engine noticed the page has https text in it, even though the title does not. The page points at libcurl, which seems like a good answer.
Another detail is that there are both server and client libraries for https, you should probably specify which you want:
[ "https" client library for c++ ]
and in fact, that SERP is pretty great (first two links are both great starting points).
What query did you do, specifically, and what kind of HTTPS libraries are you looking for?
If I do [ https ] almost all links on the SERP contain the literal string HTTPS.
If I do [ "https" ] every link on the SERP contains the literal string HTTPS.
In both cases, the results are nearly worthless. So, you must be trying something like
[ "https" libraries ]
Again, that returns only moderately relevant results (all the matches contain https literal text, but it's not a nice list of https libraries).
Being more specific is going to guide the engine to understand your intent more clearly. For example [ "https" programming library for C++ ] finds a nice list of HTTPS libraries, including this link about half-way down (personally, I would prefer that was on top):
C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming - Stack Overflow stackoverflow.com/questions/.../c-c-libraries-for-http-programming Sep 15, 2010 - C/C++ libraries for HTTP programming [duplicate] ... What well known C/C++ libraries are out there that could allow one to implement servlets, or at least provide most of the essentials for .... Self contained http/https library ...
Note the search engine noticed the page has https text in it, even though the title does not. The page points at libcurl, which seems like a good answer.
Another detail is that there are both server and client libraries for https, you should probably specify which you want:
[ "https" client library for c++ ]
and in fact, that SERP is pretty great (first two links are both great starting points).