Google Tutorial - Search Strategies

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The search terms entered into a Google query determine the quality of the material retrieved. When choosing a term:

  • Use narrow key terms (EX: Instead of "children", use "childhood development")
  • Use a few precise words instead of a number of terms (EX: "quit smoking program" instead of "program to treat tobacco cigarette smoking addiction")

For ease of use, Google ignores most punctuation (except for operators discussed below) and doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case words. The engine also ignores common words such as: to, an or the.

Note that Google recognizes an implicit and. In other words, a search for baseball card dealer will search for pages containing the word baseball and the word card and the word dealer.

Search operators allowed within a Google search include:

Notation for Operator

What It Means

Example

Term 1 Term 2

Finds pages containing both term 1 and term 2

Marco Polo

Term 1 OR Term 2

Find pages containing either term1 or term2 (or both)

Tahiti OR Hawaii

+term

Pages found must contain term typed right after the + sign

+the knack+LA jobs

-term

Do not find pages containing term

Twins -Minnesota (will find information on twins instead of the football team)

~term

Finds pages containing term as well as any of term's synonyms

Orange ~soda (will find sites for orange pop, orange beverage, orange drink, etc.)

"term1 term2 term3"

Finds pages which must contain the entire phrase in the order listed

"Billy the Kid"

"term1 * term2"

Find pages containing the phrase with * replaced by any one word

"Crosby, Stills * and Young" (will find Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)

For more research strategies, visit the following pages at Google's Help Center:

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