Greetings! You may use the plus (+) or minus (-) sign in searching to
include or exclude certain information on a Google search. You may
also place phrases in quotation marks to improve search results. Many
other search engines use these methods, too.
Google offers a Help Central at ://www.google.com/help/ On that
index you will see "Search Help" with choices to the right of the
heading. Choosing "Basics of Search" will reveal a page with the
instructions below in the sub-heading "Automatic Exclusion of Common
Words":
"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 two 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:
Star Wars Episode +I
I didn't enclose the last bit in quotations so as not to confuse your
reading but you could also place the phrase in quotations (EX: "Star
Wars Episode I") to acheive the same results.
For instance, if you are looking for red butterflies in Africa, you
might type in the following search phrase:
"African butterflies" red
or
"Red butterfly" Africa
By tweaking your search words and utilizing quotation marks, better
results will be located. Using quotation marks guarantees that the
words will appear in the search results side by side.
For advanced searches, Google offers more search information under the
"Search Help" heading of "Advanced Search Tips." It goes into a
little more detail on the usage of the minus (-) in searching, and
also explains about using "or" in a search string.
" - " Searches [Minus searches]
"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
bass -music
"OR" Searches
"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:
Vacation London OR Paris
Once you know how to ask a search engine for information, your results
will improve considerably. Should you need further clarification
before rating, please request a clarification.
SEARCH TERM:
Google search help |
