The search terms you enter and the order in which you enter them affect

• the order
• pages that appear in your search results.

Use words likely to appear on the pages you want.

[ salary negotiation tips ]
[ sciatica ]
[ window treatments ]

USE [ Australia Target store ]
NOT [ Does Australia have Target ]

Avoid using words that you might associate with your topic, but you wouldn't expect to find on the designated page(s).

USE [ lasik eye surgery ]
NOT [ documentation on lasik eye surgery ]

USE [ jobs product marketing Sunnyvale ]
NOT [ listings of product marketing jobs in Sunnyvale ]

Be specific: Use more query terms to narrow your results.

Does your query have enough specific information for Google to determine unambiguously what you're seeking?

USE [ Java Indonesia ], [ java coffee ], or [ java programming language ]
NOT [ java ]

How can you come up with more specific search terms?

Consider answers to the questions, who?, what?, where?, when?, why?, and how?

Add a term that distinguishes among them.

USE [ Tom Watson MP ], [ Tom Watson golf ], or [ Tom Watson IBM ]
NOT [ Tom Watson ]

Be brief.

For best results, use a few precise words.

USE [ quit smoking program ]
NOT [ program on quitting tobacco cigarette smoking addiction ]

You don't have to correct your spelling.

There's a good chance that Google will recognize your mistakes and suggest alternative more common spellings.

When you enter: [ Anna Kornikova tennis ]
Google responds: Did you mean: Anna Kournikova tennis

To search for a phrase, a proper name, or a set of words in a specific order, put them in double quotes.

A query with terms in quotes (" ") finds pages containing the exact quoted phrase.

Find pages mentioning Google's co-founder Larry Page.

[ "Larry Page" ]

Find pages containing

• "Larry Page"
• "Larry has a home page"
• "Larry E. Page"
• "Congressional page Larry Smith"

[ Larry Page ]

A quoted phrase is the most widely used type of special search syntax.

[ "what you're looking for is already inside you" Anne Lamott speech ]

Force Google to include a term by surrounding it with double quotes.

[ "The" Onion ]

Precede each term you do not want to appear in any result with a "-" sign.

The - sign indicates that you want to subtract or exclude pages that contain a specific term.

Do not put a space between the - and the word.

USE [ dolphins -football ]
NOT [ dolphins  - football ]

Search for a twins support group in Minnesota, but exclude pages with the word "baseball".

[ twins support group Minnesota -baseball ]

You can exclude more than one term.

Find pages on "salsa" but not the dance nor dance classes.

[ salsa -dance -class ]

Find synonyms by preceding the term with a ~, which is known as the tilde or synonym operator.

The tilde (~) operator takes the word immediately following it and searches both for that specific word and for the word's synonyms. It also searches for the term with alternative endings.

Put the ~ (tilde) next to the word, with no spaces between the ~ and its associated word.

USE [ ~lightweight laptop ]
NOT [ ~ lightweight laptop ]

Why does Google use tilde? In math, the "~" symbol means "is similar to".

The tilde tells Google to search for pages that are synonyms or similar to the term that follows.

[ ~inexpensive ] matches "inexpensive," "cheap," "affordable," and "low cost"
[ ~run ] matches "run," "runner's," "running," as well as "marathon"

Looking for a guide, help, tutorial, or tips on using Google?

[ google ~guide ]

Interested in food facts as well as nutrition and cooking information?

[ ~food ~facts ]

The synonym operator tends not to work well on infrequently-used query terms.

[ ~cockroach ]

If you don't like the synonyms that Google suggests when you use the ~ operator, specify your own synonyms with the OR operator, which I describe next.