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- indented results (O) indicate Google has found more than one result from the same website; the most relevant page is listed first
- a more results from (P) link if there are more than two results from the same site
Google Basic Search
Google assumes as its default that multiple search terms are joined by the AND operator, so that a search on the keywords [windows explorer][1] will find all the webpages that contain both search terms. Furthermore, Google will first try to find all the webpages that contain the phrase ["windows explorer"]. Google will search:
- first, for phrases (keywords as one long phrase)
- second, for webpages containing all the keywords with the greatest adjacency (closest together),
- third, for webpages containing all the keywords, regardless of where they appear on the webpage
Google will not return any results if there is no webpage containing all the search terms. Try this query to see what I mean:
[kong spektioneer synecdoche]
There is an exception to this rule. Google often returns results when a keyword is not actually on a webpage but is in a link to a website, usually as text in a link anchor.
- ↑ Matt Cutts, one of Google's software engineers who also writes a blog mostly about Google, let his readers in on a little bit of Google insider information. "At Google, we use [ and ] to mark the beginning and end of queries. So ["scorpio submarine"] means to do a phrase search for "scorpio submarine", while [scorpio submarine] means just to type in those words without the quotes—you leave the brackets out when you actually do the search." That's an interesting and useful bit of trivia. I have tried various schemes to distinguish queries and ended up using italics (not a very elegant solution). From now on, I will be using brackets to set off queries in UTW. Matt Cutt's Blog, 11 August 2005, <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/writing-google-queries/> (14 November 2006).
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