Searches are not case sensitive.
- Keywords may be entered in lower or upper case or a combination of both. Math, math, MATH
- Exception: Boolean operator OR
- Find restaurants in Whitewater or Janesville
Restaurants Whitewater OR Janesville
OR must be in caps.
- Pipe symbol may be used instead of OR
Restaurants Whitewater | Janesville
Boolean operator AND is assumed.
- Find restaurants in Whitewater and Janesville
Restaurants Whitewater Janesville
Word order matters.
- Google ranks the first word slightly higher than the second, the second slightly more than the third, etc.
- music math (results are slightly different from the search math music)
Google ignores most punctuation and symbols. Exceptions:
- Symbols used as search operators. (See the Advanced Google Search page.)
- Underscore or hyphen when used to connect words.
- brother-in-law
- end_of_file
- Symbols when used to convey meaning such as a programming language (C++), musical terms (G#), etc.
Google uses automatic word stemming.
- Google does not allow wildcards (*) to be used for variable ends of words.
- Instead, Google searches for all possible word variations.
- Diet returns diets dieting dietary
- The wildcard symbol (*) is instead used for whole words.
