Google Search Basics

“Keep it simple” is the general principle for Google search. That is to say, thinking of the words are most likely to appear on the page you are looking for, then choose the best descriptive words and keep them as few as possible. Also, the following basic rules you should keep in mind as well.

* square brackets [ ] to signal a search query in the examples below

  1. Generally all the words you put in the query will be used except the words are commonly used, like ‘the,’ ‘a,’ and ‘for,’.

  2. Search is always case insensitive.

  3. Generally punctuation and other special characters are ignored but some exceptions may apply.

  • Punctuation in popular terms that have particular meanings is not ignored.
    Example: [ C++ ] [ C# ]
  • The dollar sign ($) used to indicate prices is not ignored.
    Example: [ nikon $400 ]
  • The hyphen - and underscore symbol _ used to connect two words are not ignored.
    Example: [ quick-sort ] [ quick_sort ]

  1. By putting double quotes (“”) around a set of words, the exact words in that exact order are used in the search.

  2. Search could be within a specific website (site:).
    Example: [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] [ iraq site:.gov ]

  3. Attaching a minus sign (-) immediately before a word indicates that you want to exclude this word from the results. Example: [ anti-virus -software ] [ iraq -site:nytimes.com ]

  4. The wildcard (*) is treated as any unknown term(s) in a search.
    Example: [ Obama voted * on the * bill ]

  5. Google employs synonyms automatically. To avoid this feature, attaching a + immediately before a word. It is the same with putting double quotes (“”) around a single word.

  6. By default, the AND operator is used among the words. If you want to specify either one of several words, you can use the OR operator. (note that you have to type ‘OR’ in ALL CAPS).
    Example: [ San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 ]

References

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