Basic Search
To enter a query into Google, just type in a few descriptive words
and hit the 'enter' key (or click on the Google Search button) for your
list of relevant results.
Google only searches for pages that exactly match your search terms,
so you can try using different versions of your search terms.
For example, if a search for "Boston hotel" didn't turn up what you were
looking for, try "Boston hotels" instead. Or you might try rephrasing your
query.
For example, searches on "cheap plane tickets" and "cheap airline tickets"
return different sets of results.
Google automatically adds "and" between the words you enter so it only returns those pages that include all of your search terms. To restrict a search further, just include more terms.
Google also prefers pages in which related query terms are near each other. For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type
vacation hawaii
into the search field and click Search.
Search - Frequently Asked Questions
How can I narrow my search results?
Sometimes a search is in the right area but gives too many results. To reduce the number of search results, you might want to do a new search that only "looks" within the URLs returned by your first search query. This is often called "narrowing a search" or "searching within the current search results."Google makes this process easy. Since Google only returns web pages that contain all the words in your query, all you need to do is add more query words to the terms you have already entered. This new query will return a specific subset of the pages returned by your original "too-broad" query. You can also exclude a word 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.)
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Does it help to use "or" or "and"?
Google automatically does an "and" search for all query terms. Google does not support the logical "or" operator. Some search engines return pages that contain only a few of the query terms you enter, even giving them preference to pages that contain all the terms. Google only returns pages that contain all the terms. Because Google does not support "or" searches, there is no way to tell Google to accept pages containing either word A or word B. You can submit the query twice, once with word A and once with word B if you don't find your desired result the first time.
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Do I need to type the whole word?
To provide the most accurate results, Google does not use "stemming" or support the "wildcard" searches. In other words, Google searches for exactly the words that you enter in the search box. Searching for "googl" or "googl*" will not yield "googler" or "googlin." If in doubt, try both forms: "airline" and "airlines," for instance.
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Do capital letters matter?
Google searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington", "George Washington", and "gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN" will all return the same results.
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Advanced Search Tips
Phrase Searches
With Google, you can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") will appear together in all returned documents (unless they are stop words, special common words that require a "+" sign -- see below). Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for famous sayings or specific names.
Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Google recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes; for example, mother-in-law is treated as a phrase even if the three words aren't in quotes.
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Stop Words
Google ignores common words and characters, known as stop words. Google automatically disregards such terms as "http" and "com," as well as certain single digits and single letters, because these terms rarely help narrow a search, and can slow down searching significantly.
Use the "+" sign to include stop words in your search. Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign. You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.
To search for Star Wars, Episode I:
To find pages about OS/2:
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Excluding words from your search
Sometimes it is helpful to choose certain words or phrases to exclude from a search; you want all relevant results except those containing a certain word or phrase. Google supports this "not" functionality with the minus sign ("-"). Use the minus sign to purposefully exclude a term from your search. Be sure to include a space before the minus sign and Google will ignore all pages containing that word.
For example, to search for pages about bass but not speaker systems:
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Special Search Functions
Some words, when followed by a colon, have special meanings to Google. Right now Google supports one such special operator.
The query link: <url> shows you all the backlinks for a given URL -- that is, what pages point to that URL. For example, link:www.google.com will show you all the pages that point to Google's home page. You cannot combine a link: search with a regular keyword search.
