Operators/Tools

Purpose

Example

Keywords are separated by spaces

Narrows search

results by ensuring all

keywords typed appear, not necessarily in the same order or next to one another

Search: eye pencil

Will return pages containing these two keywords, not necessarily adjacently nor in the same order

OR

Searches for all terms which describe a specific subject to get a result which includes one of the terms

Search: makeup OR fashion OR event

Each result in the SERP will include at least one of the three terms

“   ”

Searches for that exact combination of keywords, in that order and proximity

Search: “eye pencil”

Will return pages containing that exact phrase

-

Searches for a set of terms while excluding terms that are undesirable and appear after the minus sign

Search:makeup –casino

(must be a space before the – sign) Will return pages that talk about makeup but that don’t mention the word casino

+

Searches for a set of terms, all the terms will appear in each search result

Search: “bridal makeup” + recommendation

Will return results which have the keyword combination bridal makeup along with the word recommendation

~[term]

Searches for keywords which are similar to or synonyms of the term

Search: -bridal makeup

Will return search results with the synonym wedding makeup in bold

Search: ~makeup –bridal

Will return search results with the synonyms Makeover, Beauty and Fashion in bold, while excluding any pages content related to the word bridal

*

Used to search for missing words in phrases if we’ve forgotten part of the phrase

Search: Search Engine *

Will return results with the words Search Engine and a third term which is usually found together with the other two terms. The amount of missing words returned in the search equals the amount of stars used and their location