Boolean Operator/ Strategy	Why You’ll Use It
+ AND all the words	limits your search, requiring that all words appear       Vietnam AND protest AND students       +Japan +cooking       +eagles +habitat +endangered In Google, use + to include common words overlooked by search engines A growing number of search engines assume an AND. You still need to express AND in databases!
OR any of the words  ~	is used to capture synonyms or related words       car OR automobile       coronary OR heart       Google uses ~ to expresses synonyms
- NOT AND NOT exclude	eliminates possibilities that will cause problem results       Martin Luther NOT King       + eagles -Philadelphia -football
(Most search engines allow you to use “+” and “-” for AND and NOT. These characters must appear immediately before your search terms. Do not separate them with spaces.) Some search engines allow you to exclude words in their advanced search screens.
Wildcards, Truncation, Stemming	Many search tools allow you to use an asterisk (*) to stand for any character or string of characters. This method is especially useful if you are uncertain of spelling or if you want to pick up various forms of a word or word endings.       teen* (picks up teenage, teenagers, or teens)       Herz* (for Herzegovina)
Phrases	Very often you will want words to appear together in specific order. Quotation marks (“ ”) set words off as phrases to be searched as a whole. A great strategy for names and titles too!       “vitamin A”       “raisin in the sun”       “George Washington Carver”
Proximity	Words are often not meaningful in a search unless they appear near each other in a document. In large documents, words separated by lots of text are generally unrelated. NEAR/25 specifies that two words appear within 25 words of each other (Used in AltaVista and AOL Search)       Eric Clapton NEAR/10 Cream
Field Searching	This strategy restricts searches to certain portions of Web documents. It allows you to specify that search terms appear, for instance, in the title or URL of your results. (Used in a variety of ways in AltaVista, Alltheweb, and Google and often easier to use in the advanced screen.)       title: cancer       URL: epa       domain: edu + “graphic organizers”       inurl: nasa (used in Google)       filetype: pdf
Case Sensitivity	Most search engines are case insensitive by default; that is, they treat upper- and lowercase letters the same. However, there are some that recognize uppercase and lowercase variations. It is good practice to search using lowercase letters unless you have a specific strategy in mind. In case sensitive search tools.   Baker (retrieves name and eliminates most references to cake          and bread makers)       AIDS (eliminates reference to helpers)       China (eliminates references to dishes)
Combining Strategies	Check to see if the search tool allows you to combine strategies. For instance, you might find it helpful to combine Boolean operators. Use ( ) to nest, or group your ORs and ANDs in more sophisticated searching. Like in algebra, what’s in parentheses gets processed first.       +dolphins +(behavior OR behaviour) -miami Sample using Google syntax:       inurl: nasa +saturn
Searching within Your Search	If you have a long result list, and even if you don’t, you might choose to search for targeted words within your search. Several search engines offer a handy feature to help you narrow your result lists. After you perform your first search, look for a “search within results” feature. If no such feature exists, you can use your browser’s own “find” feature to search within each page.
Natural Language Searches	Some search engines (Ask Jeeves or IxQuick, for instance) allow you to type questions as you would think or speak them.       “Why is the sky blue?”

Tip about Tips

Every search engine is slightly different. For instance, Google uses an automatic AND. Some search engines allow for “natural language” searching. Remember to carefully read the “tips page” of the search tools you use most frequently. These pages discuss the syntax, or the specific search language, used by that particular search engine or directory.