How Google Search Works<\/h2>\n
To help you use Google more effectively, here are some \u201cground rules\u201d to keep in mind when you are using Google for search.<\/p>\n
Understanding Google’s assumptions can help you use it much more efficiently.<\/p>\n
1. Google assumes you mean \u201cand.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\nWhen you type two (or more) words into the search bar, Google assumes you want to find pages containing all<\/em> of those words, regardless of how close they may \u2013 or may not<\/em> \u2013 be to each other on a page.<\/p>\nGoogle thinks you are using an \u201cand\u201d between those words, even if you don\u2019t type that word into your query.<\/p>\n
Assume you want to find a job located in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, or Chicago, and you type<\/p>\n
job<\/em> milwaukee indianapolis chicago<\/em><\/p>\nTyping those terms into Google tells Google that you really mean job<\/em> (and) Milwaukee <\/em>(and) Indianapolis <\/em>(and) Chicago<\/em>. So, it will show you web pages containing all 4 of those terms scattered across the content.<\/p>\n2. Google ignores capitalization — MOST of the time.<\/em><\/h3>\nGoogle ignores capitalization used in queries in most circumstances. So, Google will find the same pages whether you type “Chicago” or “chicago.”\u00a0 Makes no difference to Google, with these exceptions<\/p>\n
The exception<\/em> to the capitalization-doesn’t-count rule: Either\/or queries<\/h4>\nGoing back to our example above, if you wanted Google to find jobs for you in Milwaukee, Chicago, or<\/em> Indianapolis, Google could find jobs for you in those cities if you typed the word \u201cor\u201d in all capitals between the city so your query would look like this:<\/p>\njob (<\/strong>milwaukee OR<\/strong> chicago OR<\/strong> indianapolis)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nBe sure to put a space on either side of the “OR” and enclose the optional terms inside a set of parentheses, as above, to be sure that Google understands the terms that may replace each other.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t include the \u201cOR\u201d (in all capitals, as in the example above), Google assumes you intend an \u201cand\u201d between those words, so it would find only those pages which contained all<\/em> the words \u2013 Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Chicago, and job.<\/p>\n[MORE: Google-ize Your Job Search with These Tips and Tricks<\/a>.]<\/p>\n3. Quotation marks tell Google you have typed in a phrase.<\/em><\/h3>\nGoogle always assumes — unless told otherwise — that you want it to find pages which include all <\/em>of your search terms appearing anywhere<\/em> on the page, not necessarily close together.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nSo, if you are a senior sales and marketing person looking for a job in business development, you might type this search query into Google —<\/p>\n
business development<\/strong><\/p>\nWithout quotations marks around the term “business development” Google doesn’t understand that you want pages only<\/em> where the words appear together in a phrase, so Google would show you all <\/em>the pages containing those words.<\/p>\nHowever, in this case, you really want those words side-by-side, in a phrase.\u00a0 Enclose them inside double quotation marks (” “), as below, and Google will look for that exact phrase.\u00a0 <\/i> This search would look like this:<\/p>\n
“business development”<\/strong><\/p>\nThis search will have fewer results because the quotation marks were used. This is good! <\/em><\/strong>Fewer results are better<\/em> results because those results are more accurate — they are what you really <\/em>want.<\/p>\n4. Google recognizes one mathematical symbol.<\/em><\/h3>\nThe minus sign<\/strong> can help you exclude some results from your query.<\/p>\nAssume you are looking for Florida banks (the financial institutions), but your searches for “florida bank” turn up too many irrelevant results related to fish banks and food banks.<\/p>\n
How do you exclude results that are not good fits for what you want? Expand your search terms by adding words from the kind of sites you want to exclude (e.g. fish, food), but attach a minus sign (-) to the front of each word. So “fish” becomes “-fish” and “food” becomes “-food” for all the terms to be excluded.<\/p>\n
Thus, your Google search query looks like this —<\/p>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/2017-10-Google-minus-word-search-6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
— and Google returns results that include pages that DO contain the phrase “florida bank,” but do NOT contain the words “fish” or “food.”<\/p>\n
5. Google lets you specify the kind of results you want to find – news, videos, maps, and more.<\/em><\/h3>\nBy default, Google searches through every kind of web page it can find (a.k.a., “All”).<\/p>\n
But, if you know what kind of results you want, you can save time and focus your search results by choosing the type of results you want. To do that, Google offers you the ability to choose a specific category of content by clicking on the appropriate term near the top of the search results page.<\/p>\n
Depending on the query, Google’s search results page offers you an easy way to narrow down the search results. On the search results page, depending on the search you have done, Google offers you the option to choose from “All” and “More” plus 3 other options that could be what you might be what you are seeking.<\/p>\n
In addition to “All,” the 8 options include: Books, Finance, Flights, Images, Maps, News, Shopping, and Videos. The “More” drop-down menu, circled in the image below, offers options not included in the primary choices, which change depending on your initial search. Selecting one of these options allow you ask Google to find very specific information in one of the categories.<\/p>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/2018-08-04-Google-MORE-search-6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
When you have chosen the type of search, Videos, for example, Google will return search results that are videos.<\/p>\n
Bottom Line<\/h3>\n
Most of the world uses Google hundreds of times a day without paying close attention or leveraging all the functionality Google makes available. Leveraging the tips above, Google will be much more effective for you than it has been in the past. For more tips, read 7 Great Ways to Leverage Google’s Power for Your Job Search<\/a> and see the other links below!<\/p>\nMore About Using Google for Your Job Search:<\/h3>\n\n- Search Smarter: 7 Great Ways to Leverage Google’s Power for Your Job Search<\/a><\/li>\n
- Interview Preparation with Smart Google Research<\/a><\/li>\n
- 50 Google Searches to Avoid Layoffs and Bad Employers<\/a><\/li>\n
- Defensive Googling: Know What Employers<\/em> Find Associated with Your Name<\/a><\/li>\n
- Setting Up Google Alerts<\/a><\/li>\n
- 5 Google Alerts for Your Job Search<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n![\"Susan](\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Joyce_081203_12-6.jpg\")
About the author…<\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/p>\nOnline job search expert Susan P. Joyce<\/a>\u00a0has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff \u201cgraduate\u201d who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at\u00a0@jobhuntorg<\/a>\u00a0and on Facebook<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>.
\nMore about this author<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To be more effective using Google for searching the Internet, read this post to understand the ground rules of Google search so Google provides you with the best results for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":22090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"old-site-template.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-online-job-search-guide","category-layoffs"],"last_modified_at":"","edited_by":"Josh Grossman","acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4611"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22519,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions\/22519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Google thinks you are using an \u201cand\u201d between those words, even if you don\u2019t type that word into your query.<\/p>\n
Assume you want to find a job located in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, or Chicago, and you type<\/p>\n
job<\/em> milwaukee indianapolis chicago<\/em><\/p>\n Typing those terms into Google tells Google that you really mean job<\/em> (and) Milwaukee <\/em>(and) Indianapolis <\/em>(and) Chicago<\/em>. So, it will show you web pages containing all 4 of those terms scattered across the content.<\/p>\n Google ignores capitalization used in queries in most circumstances. So, Google will find the same pages whether you type “Chicago” or “chicago.”\u00a0 Makes no difference to Google, with these exceptions<\/p>\n Going back to our example above, if you wanted Google to find jobs for you in Milwaukee, Chicago, or<\/em> Indianapolis, Google could find jobs for you in those cities if you typed the word \u201cor\u201d in all capitals between the city so your query would look like this:<\/p>\n job (<\/strong>milwaukee OR<\/strong> chicago OR<\/strong> indianapolis)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Be sure to put a space on either side of the “OR” and enclose the optional terms inside a set of parentheses, as above, to be sure that Google understands the terms that may replace each other.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t include the \u201cOR\u201d (in all capitals, as in the example above), Google assumes you intend an \u201cand\u201d between those words, so it would find only those pages which contained all<\/em> the words \u2013 Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Chicago, and job.<\/p>\n [MORE: Google-ize Your Job Search with These Tips and Tricks<\/a>.]<\/p>\n Google always assumes — unless told otherwise — that you want it to find pages which include all <\/em>of your search terms appearing anywhere<\/em> on the page, not necessarily close together.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n So, if you are a senior sales and marketing person looking for a job in business development, you might type this search query into Google —<\/p>\n business development<\/strong><\/p>\n Without quotations marks around the term “business development” Google doesn’t understand that you want pages only<\/em> where the words appear together in a phrase, so Google would show you all <\/em>the pages containing those words.<\/p>\n However, in this case, you really want those words side-by-side, in a phrase.\u00a0 Enclose them inside double quotation marks (” “), as below, and Google will look for that exact phrase.\u00a0 <\/i> This search would look like this:<\/p>\n “business development”<\/strong><\/p>\n This search will have fewer results because the quotation marks were used. This is good! <\/em><\/strong>Fewer results are better<\/em> results because those results are more accurate — they are what you really <\/em>want.<\/p>\n The minus sign<\/strong> can help you exclude some results from your query.<\/p>\n Assume you are looking for Florida banks (the financial institutions), but your searches for “florida bank” turn up too many irrelevant results related to fish banks and food banks.<\/p>\n How do you exclude results that are not good fits for what you want? Expand your search terms by adding words from the kind of sites you want to exclude (e.g. fish, food), but attach a minus sign (-) to the front of each word. So “fish” becomes “-fish” and “food” becomes “-food” for all the terms to be excluded.<\/p>\n Thus, your Google search query looks like this —<\/p>\n — and Google returns results that include pages that DO contain the phrase “florida bank,” but do NOT contain the words “fish” or “food.”<\/p>\n By default, Google searches through every kind of web page it can find (a.k.a., “All”).<\/p>\n But, if you know what kind of results you want, you can save time and focus your search results by choosing the type of results you want. To do that, Google offers you the ability to choose a specific category of content by clicking on the appropriate term near the top of the search results page.<\/p>\n Depending on the query, Google’s search results page offers you an easy way to narrow down the search results. On the search results page, depending on the search you have done, Google offers you the option to choose from “All” and “More” plus 3 other options that could be what you might be what you are seeking.<\/p>\n In addition to “All,” the 8 options include: Books, Finance, Flights, Images, Maps, News, Shopping, and Videos. The “More” drop-down menu, circled in the image below, offers options not included in the primary choices, which change depending on your initial search. Selecting one of these options allow you ask Google to find very specific information in one of the categories.<\/p>\n When you have chosen the type of search, Videos, for example, Google will return search results that are videos.<\/p>\n Most of the world uses Google hundreds of times a day without paying close attention or leveraging all the functionality Google makes available. Leveraging the tips above, Google will be much more effective for you than it has been in the past. For more tips, read 7 Great Ways to Leverage Google’s Power for Your Job Search<\/a> and see the other links below!<\/p>\n Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce<\/a>\u00a0has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. A veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a recent Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Susan is a two-time layoff \u201cgraduate\u201d who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. Since 1998, Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt.org. Follow Susan on Twitter at\u00a0@jobhuntorg<\/a>\u00a0and on Facebook<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>. To be more effective using Google for searching the Internet, read this post to understand the ground rules of Google search so Google provides you with the best results for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":22090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"old-site-template.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-online-job-search-guide","category-layoffs"],"last_modified_at":"","edited_by":"Josh Grossman","acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4611"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22519,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions\/22519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Google ignores capitalization — MOST of the time.<\/em><\/h3>\n
The exception<\/em> to the capitalization-doesn’t-count rule: Either\/or queries<\/h4>\n
3. Quotation marks tell Google you have typed in a phrase.<\/em><\/h3>\n
4. Google recognizes one mathematical symbol.<\/em><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n5. Google lets you specify the kind of results you want to find – news, videos, maps, and more.<\/em><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\nBottom Line<\/h3>\n
More About Using Google for Your Job Search:<\/h3>\n
\n
\nAbout the author…<\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n
\nMore about this author<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"