Resource:Google search

Google search is a free, online web search tool.

Start Google search
Google search is online, or Internet-based. It can be accessed at:

http://www.google.com

Google search can also be accessed through a mobile phone, at:

http://m.google.com/search

Google search can also be accessed through the search bar (typically located to the right of the URL bar) on search engines such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Initiate a search query

 * 1) Type the query you want to search in the search textbox, and press the Enter or Return key.
 * 2) Google will return a page with a ranked list of result pages (termed the Search Engine Rankings Page). Each result that Googe thinks is relevant to the query is presented in the form of the page title, followed by a few lines from the page that contain the search terms, followed by the page URL.
 * 3) Visit the pages that you consider relevant. Alternatively, you may want to modify the search terms.

Default syntax: all words treated with AND operator
If a series of words is fed to Google search, Google by default looks for pages that have all the words, not necessarily next to each other. For instance, the search query:

red blue green

searches for pages that have all the terms red, blue and green. This is equivalent to the search query:

red+blue+green

Google search may ignore very common words like a, an, and it.

The order in which terms are entered may have an effect on the order in which results are displayed. For instance:

red blue green

and:

red green blue

return results in somewhat different order.

Phrase search using quotes
To search for a phrase, quotes need to be put around that phrase. For instance:

"a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"

searches for precisely that phrase. Phrase searches are case-insensitive, and Google automatically looks for conversions between whitespace and hyphenation.

The OR operator
To make Google search for pages that have one term or another, the syntax uses the OR operator, for instance:

red blue OR green

searches either for pages that contain the term red, and in addition, contain either the term blue or the term green.

Negation
It is also possible to make Google search for pages that do not contain a particular search term. Each search term that is to be negated should be preceded by a - sign, for instance:

red -blue green

returns pages that contain the terms red and green but do not contain the term blue.

Site-specific search
Google allows users to search only within a certain site. For this, the search query should contain:

site:sitename

The sitename should not include the http:// part. For instance, to search on the subwiki.org site, the syntax is:

red blue green site:subwiki.org

The search can also be specific to subdomains, and to directories within sites, for instance:

group site:groupprops.subwiki.org

Wildcard search
Google allows wildcard search, for instance:

"the real * is in the *"

This looks for phrases where the two *s could be replaced by arbitrary words (not necessarily the same word).

There is no mechanism to search for matching wildcard strings (i.e., for insisting that the wildcards at different places be the same word).

Filetype search
Google also allows users to specify the filetype of search results. For this, the search query should contain:

filetype:typename

For instance, to search for PDF documents on "small world":

"small world" filetype:pdf

Other options
Not all options used for Google search are accessible in the query box. For some options, it is necessary to go to Google's advanced search page:

http://www.google.com/advanced_search