That's what the "+" before a search term is for: this is exactly the word I'm looking for, and every result must have this. Otherwise it tries to find the most relavant page that's closest to what you typed. It makes sense to have that by default: do you really want to miss the exact page you were searching for because you used the term "graduate" instead of "graduating"?
Or you could do any number of things to communicate that there are more results using an alternate spelling. But please don't silently drop search terms I explicitly typed into the search bar.
+ing terms is a nuisance & usually has to be done after you've searched and missed "the exact page you were searching for". Maybe I'm in the minority but I find this awkward compared to Google search of old.
Oh I completely agree, there should definitely be some indication or link to process the search exactly as typed from the results page (or a user preference to make one the default). That's how spelling suggestions work, so there's already precedence for it.
If you want graduate instead of graduating you don't use + you use "graduate".
See how annoying it is? They change this stuff.
Also, like I said - default behaviour is great for most people. I dislike it. I don't want Google subbing words for me, and I don't want to enclose everything in quotes.