Google Search Tips Jam

Philipp Lenssen, whose name I believe I spelled right on the first try, Has an article about Google Syntax and easter eggs at http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-09-29-n85.html . Let me jam on what he wrote a little bit. Please go and read his whole article; I'm not responding to it all here.

"A quote/ phrase search can be written with both quotations ["like this"] as well as a minus in-between words, [like-this]."

And dots! three.blind.mice And colons! three:blind:mice . Though the second search gives slightly fewer results than the first.

Special Characters in Google - Yes, Google's a lot better at special character than they used to be. Try searching for a number with and without the dollar sign.

"Google allows 32 words within the search query (some years ago, only up to 10 were used, and Google ignored subsequent words). You rarely will need so many words in a single query..."

For simple keyword searches, this is true. But when you're trying to build a complex OR search, or you want to use many special syntax, or you're trying to do a proximity search (since Google doesn't offer a NEAR function) 32 words is fabulous -- and sometimes even then isn't enough....

"You can find synonyms of words. E.g. when you search for [house] but you want to find “home” too, search for [~house]."

Here's something fun: ~house -house. That way you discover what synonyms are being matched.

Google has a lesser known “numrange” operator which can be helpful. Using e.g. [2000..2005] (that’s two dots inbetween two numbers) will find 2000, 2001, 2002 and so on until 2005.

You can also use the numrange operator in an open-ended way. Searching for ..31 will find numbers under 31, while searching 31.. will find numbers over 31.

Google doesn’t have “stop words” anymore. Stop words traditionally are words like [the], [or] and similar which search engines tended to ignore.

It's true that Google's Web search no longer appears to have stop words. However, other properties, like Google News, still do. Try searching Google News for for better or for worse and see what happens. (This emphasizes Philipp's excellent point that each of Google's search properties are a little different.)

Thanks for the pointer Philipp!

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