To truly harness the power of the Google search engine, you'll need to learn the advanced operators and techniques available to you. This section will introduce several of the most useful operators and how to use them effecitvely.
Introducing the plus (+) operator
An important operator in Google search refinement is the plus (+) operator. Using the + operator, you can further refine your search criteria to return the results that are specific on two sets of values.
For example, the query [ "lowest priced wedding dresses in arizona" ] will most likely return a very narrow result set... possibly too narrow. It can be modified so that we can search for the exact text in two sections. The previous query can be written as:
[ "lowest priced wedding dresses" + "arizona" ]
This will return any results that contain the exact phrase "lowest priced wedding dresses" AND exact word "arizona" anywhere in the body of the website. The plus (+) operator is extremely useful when searching across forum posts in Google Groups, helping to narrow down the search results to the most relevant information possible.
Introducing the minus (-) operator
There may be a situation in which you want to search for a specific phrase but the results are returning websites that are unrelated to what you're looking for.
For example, if you are searching for [ Bruins ] (which is a type of bear) you're results will return a high number of websites targeting professional hockey (Boston Bruins) and college football (UCLA Bruins). To filter these websites out you can conduct your search with use of the minus (-) operator. The - operator means you want to subtract or exclude pages that contain a specific term. The query can be re-written as:
[ Bruins -Hockey -Football -Boston -UCLA ]
This will return any results that DO NOT contain the words of reference to hockey, boston, UCLA, or football.
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