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Google search conventions
- Searches are not case sensitive.
- 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
