Fullbean Tutorials - Google Search Operands

Punctuation & symbols

Even though you can use the punctuation marks below when you search, including them doesn't always improve the results. If we don't think the punctuation will give you better results, you'll see suggested results for that search without punctuation.

Symbol How to use it
+

Search for Google+ pages or blood types
Examples: +Chrome or  AB+

@ Find social tags
Example: @agoogler
$ Find prices
Example: nikon $400
#

Find popular hashtags for trending topics
Example: #throwbackthursday

- When you use a dash before a word or site, it excludes sites with that info from your results. This is useful for words with multiple meanings, like Jaguar the car brand and jaguar the animal.
Examples: jaguar speed -car or pandas -site:wikipedia.org
" When you put a word or phrase in quotes, the results will only include pages with the same words in the same order as the ones inside the quotes. Only use this if you're looking for an exact word or phrase, otherwise you'll exclude many helpful results by mistake.
Example: "imagine all the people"
* Add an asterisk as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms. .
Example: "a * saved is a * earned"
.. Separate numbers by two periods without spaces to see results that contain numbers in a range.
Example: camera $50..$100

Search operators

Search operators are words that can be added to searches to help narrow down the results. Don't worry about memorizing every operator, because you can also use the Advanced Search page to create these searches.

Operator How to use it
site: Get results from certain sites or domains.
Examples: olympics site:nbc.com and olympics site:.gov
related: Find sites that are similar to a web address you already know.
Example: related:time.com
OR Find pages that might use one of several words.
Example: marathon OR race
info: Get information about a web address, including the cached version of the page, similar pages, and pages that link to the site.
Example: info:google.com
cache: See what a page looks like the last time Google visited the site.
Example: cache:washington.edu

Note: This information was copied from https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

CSS button    WDG logo    Fight for your right to Web standards now!

© Copyright 2015 by Ralph Sutter. All Rights Reserved.
Please send your comments regarding this site to ralph@rsutter.com