The Basic search help article covers all the most common issues, but sometimes you need a little
bit more power. This document will highlight the more advanced features of Google Web Search.
Have in mind though that even very advanced searchers, such as the members of the search
group at Google, use these features less than 5% of the time. Basic simple search is often
enough. As always, we use square brackets [ ] to denote queries, so [ to be or not to be ] is an
example of a query; [ to be ] or [ not to be ] are two examples of queries.

Phrase search ("")
By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact
words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the
words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes
are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results
accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that
refer to Alexander G. Bell.

Search single word exactly as is ("")
Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example,
childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ].
But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really
want it. By putting double quotes around a single word, you are telling Google to match that word
precisely as you typed it.

Search within a specific website (site:)
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For
example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from
nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times.
You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only
from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

Terms you want to exclude (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that
contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the
word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the
minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the
query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to
software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them,
for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words.
For example, place a hyphen before the 'site:' operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site
from your search results.

Fill in the blanks (*)
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a
query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then
find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of
Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). The query [
Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that
the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

The OR operator
Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow
either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, [ San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 ] will give you results about either
one of these years, whereas [ San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 ] (without the OR) will show
pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The
AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)