Advanced Search | Search Help |
Search Tips | Search Features | ||
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The Basic Search | To enter a query, type in a few descriptive words and
press the Enter key or click the Search
button for a list of relevant results.
Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, Google analyzes not only the candidate page, but also the pages linking into it to determine the value of the candidate page for your search. Google also prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other. Note: Encrypted, viewable PDF documents are converted to HTML for indexing; however, the HTML is not displayed. |
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Refining Your Search | Since Google only returns web pages that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined query returns a specific subset of the pages that were returned by your original broad query. |
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"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 an office in either London or Paris, enter: |
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Excluding Words | You can exclude a word from your search by
putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in
front of the term you want to exclude. Make
sure you include a space before the minus sign.
For example, the search: will return pages about bass that do not contain the word "music." |
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Phrase Searches | You can search for phrases by adding quotation
marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like
this") appear together in all returned documents.
Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful
when searching for famous sayings or specific names.
Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the search: is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes. Google recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors. |
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See Your Search Terms in the Results | Every Google search result lists one or more excerpts from the web page to display how your search terms are used in context on that page. In the excerpt, your search terms are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly determine if that result is from a page you want to visit. |
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Automatic "and" Queries | By default, Google only returns pages that include
all of your search terms. There is no need to
include "and" between terms. For example, to search
for engineering product specification documents,
enter:
To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms. |
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Spelling | A single spelling suggestion is returned with the
results for queries where the spell checker has
detected a possible spelling mistake.
The spell checker feature is context sensitive. For example, if the query submitted is "gail divers," "gail devers" is suggested as an alternative query. However, "scuba divers" would not return an alternate query suggestion. Note: Currently, the spell checker supports only US English. |
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Synonyms | Synonyms are other words that have the same or similar meanings. They are displayed as "Other suggested searches" on the results page. |
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Does Capitalization Matter? | Google searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are understood as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington," "George Washington," and "George washington" all return the same results. |
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Does Google Observe Stop Words? | Google ignores common words and characters known
as stop words. These include most pronouns and
articles. Google automatically disregards such
terms as "where" and "how,"
as well as certain single digits and single
letters. These terms rarely help to narrow a
search and can significantly slow searching.
If you want to use stop words in your search,
use the "+" sign or
enclose your phrase containing stop words in
quotation marks. Make sure that you
include a space before the "+" sign.
For example, to search for Annual Report Version I: You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches. |
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Does Google Use Stemming? | To provide the most accurate results, Google
does not use "stemming" or support
"wildcard" searches. Rather, Google
searches for exactly the words that you enter
into the search box.
For example, searching for "airlin" or "airlin*" will not yield "airline" or "airlines.". If in doubt, try both forms, for example: "airline" and "airlines." |
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