Keywords are the building blocks of web queries. These are simple words such as the following:

When you type a simple keyword into a search box, the search engine will look through its index to find sites where your keyword appears and then return the best results based on relevance and popularity.

A single keyword will usually return results that are much too broad for your needs. In these cases, you can begin to combine words into keyword phrases. Try out the following and compare them to the simple keywords above:

Now, rather than getting results that contain only one word, you'll get a list of sites that contain all of the words in your query.

If you are still not finding the information you need, you can try refining your search some more by adding to or changing parts of your keyword phrase.

One important note: If you're an AOL user, you may be familiar with AOL Keywords -- the words or phrases that act as shortcuts to specific sites or content when they are entered into the URL bar or Keyword window (Ctrl+K) within the AOL software. AOL Keywords are entirely separate from the keywords we're talking about here. On the open web, search keywords will not take you to one specific destination and, unlike AOL Keywords, they are not specific to any one browser or search engine.

Expand or narrow your search

Expanding and narrowing your query allows you to add or subtract from the result set by setting additional parameters for your search. A few of the most common and useful examples include:

Search for exact matches using quotation marks
When you conduct a keyword search, the results will contain all of your keywords but not necessarily as one phrase. If you only want to see results with the words in the exact order you specify, you can enclose the phrase in quotation marks to limit the results to pages that contain all of the words in order. This can be helpful if your phrase contains several common words.

Compare these results for a common name:

You can also use quotation marks to get an exact match for part of your query only.

Compare these results with the ones above. Notice that the name is an exact match, but biography may appear anywhere within the results:

Use the minus sign to subtract keywords from the results

If you only want to see some search results and not others, you can specify keywords to exclude from the results. Note that the minus sign has to be immediately in front of the excluded word (no spaces). For example:

Results about Michael Jackson albums other than "Thriller":

Results for all puppy supplies except crates:

Use OR to find either of two terms
When you use the word OR in your search you can specify that you want two separate types of results. This can be handy for comparing prices, statistics, product reviews, etc.

Trying to decide where to spend your vacation? Use OR to compare packages in two places:

Interested in seeing trends over time? Use OR to compare statistics:

Advanced search
Our advanced search feature allows you to apply additional filters to your search results by language, usage rights or specific website. You can also use a form instead of the methods mentioned above to expand or narrow your search. The advanced search page is accessible via a link at the top of the search results page.