Advanced Search Made Easy
You can increase the accuracy of your searches
by adding operators that fine-tune your keywords. Most of the options
listed on this page can be entered directly into the Google search
box or selected from Google's Advanced
Search page.
Additionally, Google supports several advanced
operators which are query words that have special meaning to Google.
For a complete list, click
here.
Google ignores common words and characters such
as “where” and “how”, as well as certain
single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down
your search without improving the results. Google will indicate
if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the
results page below the search box.
If a common word is essential to getting the results
you want, you can include it by putting a “+” sign in
front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the “+”
sign.)
Another method for doing this is conducting a
phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around
2 or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., “where
are you”)are included in the search.
For example, to search for Star Wars, Episode
I, use:
Sometimes what you're searching for has more than
one meaning; &“bass” can refer to fishing or music.
You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign
("-") immediately in front of the term you want to avoid. (Be sure
to include a space before the minus sign.)
For example, to find web pages about bass that
do not contain the word “music”, type:
Search for complete phrases by enclosing them
in quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like
this") will appear together in all results exactly as you have
entered them. Phrase searches are especially useful when searching
for famous sayings or proper names.
Google supports the logical "OR" operator. To
retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase
OR between terms.
For example, to search for a vacation in either
London or Paris, just type:
If you know the website you want to search but
aren't sure where the information is located within that site, you
can use Google to search only that domain. Do this by entering what
you're looking for followed by the word "site" and a colon
followed by the domain name.
For example, to find admission information on
Stanford University's site, enter:
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