caveat: hopefully i haven't messed up search term syntax :-)

validator html | css site:www.softpedia.com "Rated by" Rating "user reviews" "Very
Good" | Excellent

validator html | css site:www.softpedia.com "Rated by" Rating "user reviews" "Very
Good" | Excellent -"Good Good

i get same number (528) of results after tried to exclude "Good Good"

example of result synopsis/snippet, still showing excluded phrase:
Download cssed 0.4.0 - cssed is a scriptable and modular GTK2 CSS ...
Rating: NOT RATED Rated by: 0 user(s). Rate it, ------------, Excellent, Very
Good, Good, Fair ... HTML Link Validator will check web pages for broken links ...
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne...ed/cssed.shtml


i don't think this is caused by overly lengthy search phrase because i get same
ignore of same exclude, when comparing shorter search phrase:
http://www.google.com/search?q=css+s...oftpedia.com+%
22Very+Good%22++%7C+Excellent
http://www.google.com/search?q=css+s...oftpedia.com+%
22Very+Good%22++%7C+Excellent+-%22Good%2C+Good

and as you'd expect, moving "site:.." to beginning of phrase, getting rid of comma
or, adding closing double quote still gives the same number results:
http://www.google.com/search?q=css+s...oftpedia.com+%
22Very+Good%22++%7C+Excellent+-%22Good+Good%22
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%...edia.com+css+%
22Very+Good%22++%7C+Excellent+-%22Good+Good%22


one thing i noticed is that when the exclude phrase shows in snippet,
Rate it, ------------, Excellent, Very Good, Good,
it's because google found it in form options:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne...ors/Rapid-CSS-
Editor.shtml

can find exclude phrase Good Good only in html source (paste of that region):
<option value="5">Excellent</option>


<option value="4">Very Good</option>

<option value="3">Good</option>

<option value="2">Fair</option>

<option value="1">Poor</option>

except that there's no comma in the html source!!

anyway, this looks like just an additional weird thing. i don't think it explains why
google gives the same number of results when try excluding "Good Good".