Google is actually pretty good at getting the semantic meaning, but the SERPs show snippets of the content, and users only click on results that match the query.
Google could stop bolding the keyword matches in the SERPs, but that would be a disaster because they are useful for picking the best result.
My point is that this is not purely a Google bug, but also a bug in human nature. People like exact keyword matches to their queries.
> the SERPs show snippets of the content, and users only click on results that match the query
I'd love to see a source to back that up. The only data I've seen on this is various eyetracking and/or click tracking studies which suggest higher up on SERP=more clicks.
Google could stop bolding the keyword matches in the SERPs, but that would be a disaster because they are useful for picking the best result.
My point is that this is not purely a Google bug, but also a bug in human nature. People like exact keyword matches to their queries.