Boolean Search Terms “And” ,“Or”, “Not.”

Boolean search terms tell Google how to search using keywords. Use these search terms to enhance your results by including them in between the keywords you’re searching.

“And” combines search terms. This will help you narrow your search. Google will only present search results that include both keywords.

“Or” broadens your search results. Google will return a search that contains any of the keywords used.

“Not” ignores a search term. This search term will also narrow your search results. Google will exclude keywords that are linked to the “Not” search term. This is useful when two keywords are often used together.

For example:

Cats AND Dogs- Google will search for both cats and dogs.

Cats OR Dogs- Google will provide results on either cats or dogs. Articles will not be specifically about both subjects.

Cats NOT Dogs- Google will search for results about cats and exclude articles that include dogs.

Breakdown your research question into specific keywords, and exclude unnecessary words. Think about which words are most relevant to your topic, and search using those terms. To further narrow down your results use synonyms and boolean search terms! NEVER enter in an entire research question into a search engine. This will make the search engine produce irrelevant results, and cost you valuable time.

Quotation marks

To find words in the exact same order, put quotes around them.

Singular and Plural Searches

Google does not automatically search for the plural form of words. Use the boolean search term "or" to search for both the singular and plural form of a word.

Google Ignores Common Words

Common words such as "a", "how", and "this" are ignored by Google. Use a plus sign ( +) to combine words together so they are not ignored by Google. Additionally you can use the minus sign (-) to exclude words from a Google search, and prevent Google from displaying results that include those words.