What is Advanced Search on Google? (2024)

Advanced search is a built-in feature of Google (and most search websites) that allows a user to specify additional requirements for a search. When used for searching the Web, an advanced search gives additional information to Google, which helps refine the search.

You might remember a time when you took lessons at your school library about how to use the card catalog to find specific books by an author, title or subject, and knowing how to use that card catalog made it easier for you to locate books about specific subjects. Knowing how to use the advanced search on Google will make you better at finding what you are looking for on the web.

For example, you might enter the words “auto” and “repair” in the search box when you type in a search. After you start the search, Google interprets what you were looking for to determine the results to show you. The search results will include any website that has to do with the words auto and repair. Some of the websites might just be about autos, some websites listed in the list will be about mechanics and others will be about auto repair.

If you put the words in quotes using “auto repair” you've told Google you want websites that use the words in that combination instead of any website that has to do with the word auto and the word repair. Using a phrase in quotes is a way to limit your search to words used in a specific order.

Google is pretty good at interpreting what you are likely to be searching for when you enter a search term, but if you know how to use the advanced search features, you can save yourself time and find more relevant results. There are a couple of ways to access these additional features for advanced search, using specific characters like the parentheses, which are called “operators,” and using Google's advanced search web page, which does a lot of the work for you and can be easier to use for beginners. Let's look at both.

The text area where you enter your search term on Google or other search sites is called the “search box.” When you enter characters in that box and click or tap to search Google uses whatever you entered to search its database of websites and return web site listings relevant to your request.

Certain punctuation marks can be used to provide additional instructions to Google's search. I mentioned putting a phrase in quotes earlier, and this punctuation limits the search to websites that use that specific word order and combination. You can include multiple words in quotes to search for some very specific information such as a website that refers to a line in a song like “a little help from my friends.” Google will search for web sites that include that specific phrase and ignore websites that simply include the words.

Another common punctuation mark is the minus or dash sign. When you place a minus or dash sign in front a word like this in the search box “fruit -apples” Google will produce results that include the word fruit but exclude any website that includes the word apples. Using the dash for exclusion is useful for words with multiple meanings like jaguar, which is the name of an animal and a car. Using the word car in the search with a dash sign in front of it “jaguar -car” will exclude websites that include the word car in their content.

An operator is a specific word that when added to a search gives Google specific instructions on your search. An example of an operator is the word “OR” which when added between two words will produce results for websites that include either word. If you were searching for a website that could use the word shop or the word store, you could add the word OR in between the two words like this “shop OR store.” Your results will include websites that include the word store as well as websites that include the word shop.

Another type of operator is a word with a colon after it. For example, using the word “site” with a colon and then your search term can limit the results of your search to a specific website directly from the Google search box. Other operator terms exist which can be used to find pages that link to a specific website and find websites related to a specific website.

If you're interested in more ways to use punctuation for your searches you can read this web page by Google on how punctuation and operators work to produce specific search results.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?p=adv_operators&hl=en&rd=1

Knowing a few of the punctuation marks and operators that I described can be helpful and will help you search the web faster, but there's actually an easier way to use all of these advanced search features without the need to remember any of them, and that's the advanced search web page on Google.

This web page includes several search boxes where you can enter your search. Each box explains how it will find web pages or narrow your results and automatically starts the search just as though you had entered the punctuation or operator to conduct that specific type of search.

In addition to the explaining what happens when you use a specific box on the advanced search page, you'll find an explanation of the punctuation and operators you can use on the main Google search page to help you learn how to use the advanced search features you use most often. As you become familiar with them through repetition, you can use the correct punctuation or operator and save time, or if you don't care to remember them, always use the advanced search web page.

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

Since we all access the web and receive more of our news and information from websites, learning how to search the web to find information is helpful and possibly an essential skill for using the Internet. While we can let Google and other search sites interpret our broad general requests, there are times when we want something very specific and knowing how to use Google's powerful search software to help find something specific will make the technology work for you.

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