Keywords may be entered in lower or upper case or a combination of both. Math, math, MATH
Exception: Boolean operator OR
Find apartments in Cambridge or Arlington
Apartments Cambridge OR Arlington
OR must be in caps.
Pipe symbol may be used instead of OR Apartments Cambridge | Arlington
Boolean operator AND is assumed
Find apartments in Cambridge and Arlington Apartments Cambridge Arlington
Word order matters.
Google ranks the first word slightly higher than the second, the second slightly more than the third, etc.
music math (results are slightly different from the search math music)
Google ignores most punctuation and symbols. Exceptions:
Dollar sign when used to indicate price.
canon $400 gives different results than canon 400.
Underscore or hyphen when used to connect words.
brother-in-law
end_of_file
Symbols when used to convey meaning such as a programming language (C++), musical terms (G#), etc.
Google uses automatic word stemming.
Google does not allow wildcards to be used for variable ends of words.
Instead, Google searches for all possible word variations.
Diet returns diets dieting dietary
Attribution*
This work, "Google Search Tips", is a derivative of "Google Search Tips" by MIT Libraries, used under CC BY. This derivative work is licensed under CC BY by Meagan Kane.