by Carol Henrichs

Created on: July 09, 2009   Last Updated: July 22, 2009

Advanced search tips for Google

There seems to be no end to the amount of information available on the Internet. With just a few keystrokes facts and data can be retrieved with Google search.

Started by two college students at Stanford University in 1996, the purpose of Google is to organize information from around the world and to make it useful and accessible. Today, Google remains the most frequently used search engine in the U.S. and around the world.

Google search is a very powerful tool with seemingly limitless options. Accessing Google's many specialized search functions is easy as well as accessible. From a basic search for a specific keyword or phrase to the more refined searches for movie show times, books on the New York Times best seller list, or the real estate listings in your local area, Google's advanced searches makes it easy to find just what you are looking for.

A search for a simple phrase may return several pages of potential Web sites. But with Google's advanced search, using double quotation marks ("") - both before and after - the phrase, the potential number of returns is often more manageable. The double quotes limit the search to the exact wording and order of the search words or phrase.

To seek a query from a particular website use a colon (:) after the query followed by the website. For example to search for stories about airports on the Helium website, the search would look like this: "airports: Helium.com".

A minus sign (-) is used for words that are to be excluded from a query. It uses a space and hyphen before the word that is to be eliminated from the search. For example, if a query is Internet business e-books, the result would be very different than Internet business -e-books. The latter would eliminate e-books on the subject of Internet business. The hyphen in the word "e-books" is unaffected by the search function.

Just like the minus sign, the plus sign (+) also has a function. The plus sign preceding a word acts similarly to having quotes around it. The result is the exact phrase as it is entered in the search query.

An asterisk (*) can be used as a wildcard, either for words inside a query. To search for a phrase using a few words, an asterisk may be used to fill in the blanks. For example, "Mary * little lamb" would produce the nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Finally, using the OR function (in caps) will produce results as it implies - either/or. For example 2008 candidates Republican OR Democrat will produce very different results than those without the operator OR since (AND) is the default and is implied. In the first example, the results are sites that mention one party or the other. Without the OR operator, sites include both parties on one page.

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