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This reference file explains Google's search syntax for the Google Search service.
Topics:
The Basic Search
Spelling
Synonyms
Automatic "and" Queries
"
OR" Searches
See Your Search Terms in the Results
Does Capitalization Matter?
Does Google Observe Stop Words?
Does Google Use Stemming?
Refining Your Search
Excluding Words
Phrase Searches
Restricted Searches
Advanced Operators
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.
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.
Synonyms
Synonyms are other words that have the same or similar meanings. They are displayed as "Other
suggested searches" on the results page.
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:
"engineering product specifications"
To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms. "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:
"office london OR paris" 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.
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 "turner's syndrome," "Turner's
Syndrome," and "Turner's syndrome" all return the same results.
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:
"annual report version +I"
You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.
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 "neopla" or "neopla*" will not yield "neoplasm" or "neoplastic".
If in doubt, try both forms, for example: "neoplasm" and "neoplastic." 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.
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:
"bass -music"
will return pages about bass that do not contain the word "music."
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:
"father-in-law"
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.
Restricted Searches
You may also narrow searches by restricting
queries in certain ways.
Restrict Type |
Query Syntax |
Example |
to a given location on your site |
allinurl; allintitle; inurl; intitle |
allinurl:google help see Advanced Operators
for details |
to specific domains |
site: |
site:google.com see Advanced Operators
for details |
to specific file types like
excel spreadsheets, pdf docs, etc. |
filetype: |
filetype:pdf |
Directory Restricting
To restrict the directories searched, enter a URL that
drills down through the directory structure to the
directories or files to be searched. For example,
the query [google.com/manual/] restricts the search
to everything at the manual level. If the trailing
slash is not included, as in [google.com/manual], then all subdirectories are
also searched.
Advanced Operators
Google Search supports several advanced
operators, which are query words with special functions.
A list of the advanced operators with explanation are
provided below.
cache:
The search engine keeps the text of the many documents it
crawls available in a backed-up format known as "cache." A cached
version of a web page can be retrieved if the original
page is unavailable (for example, the page's server
is down). The cached page appears exactly as it looked
when the crawler last crawled it and includes a message
(at the top of the page) to indicate that it's a cached
version of the page.
The query [cache:] shows the cached version
of the web page. For instance, [cache:www.google.com]
shows the cached page of Google's homepage.
Note: There can be no space between cache:
and the web page URL in the query.
If you include other words in the query, those words
will be highlighted within the cached document. For
instance, [cache:www.google.com press releases] shows
the cached content with the words "press" and
"releases" highlighted.
info:
The query [info:] returns all
information available for that particular URL.
For instance, [info:www.google.com] shows information
about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space
between the info: and the web page URL.
site:
If you include [site:] in your query, the results
are restricted to those websites in the given domain.
For instance,
[help site:www.google.com]
finds pages about help within www.google.com.
[help site:com]
finds pages about help within .com URLs.
Note: There can be no space between the "site:" and the domain.
link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict
your search to all pages that link to the query page.
To do this, use the [link:sampledomain.com]
syntax in the search box. No other query terms can be
specified when using this special query term.
For example, to find all links to Stanford's main
page, enter:
"link:www.stanford.edu"
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], the
results are restricted to documents with all of the
query words in the document's HTML title. For
example, [allintitle: google search] only
returns documents that have both "google" and "search" in the HTML title.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the
search is restricted to results with documents
containing that word in the HTML title. For example,
[intitle:google search] returns documents
that mention the word "google" in their
HTML title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document either in the title or
anywhere else in the document.
Note: There can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.
Putting [intitle:] in front of every word
in your query is equivalent to putting
[allintitle:] at the front of your query.
For example, [intitle:google intitle:search]
is the same as [allintitle: google search].
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:],
the search is restricted to results with all of the
query words in the URL. For example, [allinurl:
google search] returns only documents that have
both "google" and "search" in the URL.
Note: [allinurl:] works on words,
not URL components. In particular, it ignores
punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] restricts the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the
URL, but doesn't require that they be separated by a slash
within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that
they be in that particular word order. There is
currently no way to enforce these constraints.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query,
the results are restricted to documents containing
that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:google
search] returns documents that mention the word "google" in their URL and mention the word
"search" anywhere in the document either
in the URL or anywhere else in the document.
Note: There can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.
Note: [inurl:] works on words, not
URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation.
Thus, in the query [google inurl:foo/bar], the
inurl: operator affects only the word "foo," which is the single word following
the inurl: operator, and does not affect the
word "bar." The query [google inurl:foo
inurl:bar] can be used to require both "foo" and "bar" to be in the URL.
Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in
your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:]
at the front of your query. For example,
[inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as
[allinurl: google search].
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