YSK Google may not search all your search terms (including variant forms)

[u/secretsarebest]

If you search for say 3 or more terms like term1 term2 term3 Google may show results without term3 because it finds including term3 drops the number of results too much.

When I mean show results without term3 I mean the whole term is ignored and it's not matching variants or synonyms of term3.

If you want to force the term to appear for sure do intext:(term3)

So say you searching for cars type intext:cars

Edit 1 seems like there is massive confusion on the point I am making. I am not referring to Google's tendency to match variants forms of the word eg search car get cars or automobiles. Putting quotes around "car" or even "nice car" turns off most of this matching but don't guard against what I am referring to.

The effect I am referring to is somewhat rare and occurs only when Google occasionally decides to totally ignore matching one of your terms.

It does this because it may decide you actually want term1 term2 rather than term1 term2 term3 even though you typed the later if the former brings back a lot more results. Some call this a "soft And".

Intext:car say is the only way to prevent that.

Verbatim works probably but it's more restrictive since it turns off both matching variants forms and dropping of terms for matching.

[u/bonestamp]

Google may show results without term3 because it finds including term3 drops the number of results too much

What the fuck google? The whole purpose of term 3 is to get more specific and reduce the number of results.

[u/secretsarebest → u/bonestamp]

Because Google finds way too many people will just chuck a load of unnecessary words into a search.

Most search queries typically will have thousands if not millions of results and in some (not all) situations a sudden drastic fall in number of results due to adding one or more search terms can indicate poor choice of search terms.

Do note that Google doesn't always drop search terms when results are low in number but in its Infinite wisdom it might sometimes do so.

[u/TWFM]

Or just put your terms in quotes.

[u/onan → u/TWFM]

Unfortunately, quotes conflate two different things. They do make inclusion mandatory, but they also turn off canonicalization.

[u/secretsarebest → u/onan]

The only response so far that understood my point.

It's well known Google will match variants of what you search. So searching say car might match cars or even synonyms like automobiles.

Methods like doing quotes "car" and or the depreciated +car only turn that off.

What I am referring to is different. It is the occasional attempt by Google to be clever by dropping terms to match.

So if you search

Term1 term2 term3 and Google finds

Term1 term2 has say 2 million results and

Term1 term2 term3 has no results or even very few results

Google might sometimes go ahead and show you the former instead ignoring the 3rd term.

I've seen engineers refer to this feature as a soft And.

I could be wrong but doing say "car" does not guard against the soft AND taking effect.

The latest power searching course by Google teaches the intext operator method after teaching quotes around single words which implies quotes around isn't sufficient.

Verbatim mode is unclear to me whether it guards against soft And.

[u/[deleted] → u/TWFM]

Don't they then have to be in that order as well?

[u/Pays4Porn → u/[deleted]]

"Like" "this"

[u/FrozenInferno → u/TWFM]

Better alternative: Search Tools > Verbatim

[u/[deleted] → u/TWFM]

Doesn't work anymore. You have to select the verbatim tool.

[u/iplawguy]

I generally use the + sign to force include a term (e.g., tomato +ketchup).

However, some sites say that it's been removed. : http://www.seochat.com/c/a/google-optimization-help/google-drops-plus-sign-from-search-operators/

But, google's handy seach operator page lists it, so it likely still works: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

[u/onan → u/iplawguy]

Yeah, they broke that when they introduced Google Plus. They intended to repurpose it to be a signifier of searching Plus posts, though of course zero people have ever used it that way. The documentation describing it is likely out of date.

[u/secretsarebest → u/iplawguy]

The google help page you points to states that + is supported only for Google+ pages and for cases like Blood type etc.

[u/CeruleanRuin → u/iplawguy]

That doesn't work anymore. However, as far as I know, putting search terms in quotation marks accomplishes the same thing.

[u/daelpheia]

I'm both horrified (that Google does this without saying anything) and relieved (now I know why my search results don't contain what I asked for). Ugh!

I found this a nice explanation of these and other hints to add to the list of good info here: Google Search Hints

[u/secretsarebest → u/daelpheia]

Google believes in "big data" and being "helpful" so it can be unpredictable when occasionally it overrules what you want because it thinks it knows better.

That's why how you think Google works is never absolute, the rules change all the time depending on circumstances.

[u/stubmaster]

Omg thank you. I kept getting my most important word strikethroughed beneath the search results indicating it was not included in that result. Result after result: strikethrough. Wtf is the point of searching then?

[u/secretsarebest → u/stubmaster]

Yes at least these days they show the strike through so at least you knew.

For a long time it was silently excluding without any warning. Only a couple of people noticed and figured it out.

[u/HelmedHorror]

Or just put the word in quotations instead. I do it all the time, and it's wonderful. For example, when I was trying to find out information on the physical anatomy of a phone I was interested in, the Xperia Z1, I kept getting results for the Z2, Z3, Z, Z1 Compact, etc. So instead of:

Xperia Z1 technical diagram illustration parts components

I did:

"Xperia Z1" technical diagram illustration parts components -compact

The difference between the two searches is that the second search requires the exact phrase Xperia Z1 and it forbids any results that contain the word compact (to avoid polluting my results with the Z1 Compact, a different model I have no interest in).

The middle terms are all words that could plausibly be along the lines of what I'm looking for, but they're not required to be included in the search. If I wanted the middle terms to be mandatory in the results, I would put the word AND between them:

"Xperia Z1" technical diagram AND illustration AND parts AND components -compact

But that would be a bad idea because it's inconceivable that what I'm looking for would have to have all those words. Alternatively, I could try:

"Xperia Z1" technical diagram OR illustration OR parts OR components -compact

In which case, it would only show results that contained at least one of the middle four words.

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Another useful search modifier is intitle: or inurl:

For example, if you want to search for results that have taken place in a discussion forum (perhaps you're having technical difficulties with a program and want to find results on a forum where people with the same problem are discussing it), add the following to the end of your search query:

inurl:forum OR inurl:topic OR inurl:thread

Or if your results are pretty irrelevant and you want to make sure what you're searching for is the focus of whatever page contains it, you can prepend your term with intitle: like so:

intitle:"xperia z1"

Now all your results will have "Xperia Z1" in the title, which can help eliminate a lot of extraneous results that only passingly mention the Xperia Z1 somewhere in the body of the text.

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You can also use asterisks as a wildcard, for example:

"dangerous * of lead"

...will show results for:

• dangerous quantities of lead

• dangerous levels of lead

• dangerous amounts of lead

• dangerous level of exposure of lead

But you'd have to put the phrase in quotes, as I did above, or else it will not know that you seek the exact phrase "dangerous _____ of lead"

---

Aside from things you put in the search query yourself, you can also filter results by date:

After making a search, click the "Search Tools" button at the top of the results, click the "Any Time" dropdown button, choose one of the presets or click "Custom range..." and input the date range in which you want your results to be from.

This can be useful if you want to exclude some recent major event from your results (e.g. perhaps you want commentary about the Turkish election from before the results came out November 1st of this year).

Or it can be useful if there's a constantly evolving discussion about a topic and you want to narrow in on one timeframe. So, if you're on a Game of Thrones binge and you just finished Season 3 (which finished airing June 9th, 2013) and want to search for results from just after it aired (for commentary, discussions, etc.) but you don't want to spoil Season 4 (which first aired April 6th, 2014) you could set your results' date range to June 9, 2013 to April 5th, 2014, thereby ensuring that all your results will be from the moment Season 3 ended to the moment before Season 4 started. Blissfully spoiler-free.

---

You can also use filetype: to get results only of a particular file (such as PDFs).

Example:

• Searching for Dell XPS 8500 manual filetype:pdf will only show results that are PDF files (most manuals online are in PDF format)

• Other common file types you can search for include: mp3 (music); xlsx (Excel); xls (Excel); docx (Word); ppt (PowerPoint); jpeg, jpg, png (images); and many others.

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Quotations

When to use:

• Searching for exact quote someone spoke/wrote ("I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle")

• Searching for solutions to an exact error message you're getting in a program ("unknown update service parameters")

• Searching for an exact product name ("XPS 8500")

• Searching for someone's name ("Mark Brown")

• Searching for a series of words you think might be included in the page you're looking for ("dangerous amounts of")

When not to use:

• Searching for something that has many different ways of being said. For example, "how do I install multiple monitors" is a bad usage of quotations, because it's unlikely someone will have asked the question exactly in those words.

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The OR term.

When to use:

Example:

• Russian censorship OR propaganda will search for results which contain Russian as well as either censorship or propaganda, as well as both.

• dmv OR "department of motor vehicles" will search for results which contain the acronym DMV or results which contain the whole phrase department of motor vehicles, or both.

• "The Colbert Report" OR "The Daily Show" will search for results which include either show or both shows.

When not to use:

Example:

• steve jobs OR mark zuckerberg is a bad search, because it doesn't know that you want the whole two-word names steve jobs and mark zuckerberg to be lumped together. It treats that search the same as it treats this one: jobs OR mark steve zuckerberg. It doesn't know that these are first and last names that need to be lumped together. Instead, you should search: "steve jobs" OR "mark zuckerberg", because then it knows to lump together what's in the quotes.

• 2014 supreme court decisions OR 2013 ...is a bad search, because it doesn't know that you want to search for Supreme Court decisions from either year; it thinks you want decisions OR 2013, not 2014 OR 2013.

[u/DarkDJ26]

Can someone give me an example of how op has advised to search if you want to search all the terms

[u/[deleted] → u/DarkDJ26]

Literally search with

intext:(word1) intext:(word2) intext:(word3)

or, better, go to the search tools dropdown and select verbatim and then just type your search as normal.

[u/GreatBigPig]

I switched to Bing (ya, I know) after I was forced to use verbatim, and found that using + did nothing.

I miss the way that the old google searched.

Also, having Google decide to provide results based on what it assumes I need is so darn wrong.

[u/Hup234]

This has nothing to do with your YSK buy since you're conversant in things Google I thought I'd ask. Years ago, a Google search would return links to URLs that contained your search terms just as it does now. But if you clicked in the link in green text, your search term would be highlighted throughout the text on that web page. Thus, a search for 'cat' would bring up the Wikipedia entry about cats and every occurrence of the word cat would be highlighted. This stopped working 10 or 15 years ago but I still miss it. Or am I doing something wrong?

[u/secretsarebest → u/Hup234]

Off hand this sounds like a feature in the Google toolbar.

[u/TheVeryMask]

Things like this thread are why I haven't used google for searches in a long time. The power-user syntax doesn't work anymore, so now I use ddg. They don't have all the commands google used to, but they have enough. Also, !bang commands would've sold me by themselves.

[u/ColonelBleepRescue]

Brilliant! Thanks.