Interesting that the + operator doesn't work but the - operator still works just fine.

I don't know how many times I've had to add -nodejs to things I'm trying to search to eliminate irrelevant garbage from some of my searches.

They removed the + operator because they wanted people to be able to search "G+", "Google+" and "Google +" in addition to Google Plus. Interesting that they haven't reverted it yet, though, considering that Google Plus is now utterly defunct.

You can just put the single word in quotes. As far as I can tell, it works the same way as the + used to.