Optional and automatically excluded words
Google usually returns pages that use all of the words you search for. However, if some of the words in your search don't appear on the best pages we find, we'll also consider pages that don't include them. For example, when you search for recipe for a cheese souffle, we might return recipes that don't happen to include the words "for" or "a".
Very common words (often called "stopwords"), such as "the", "and", or "of", are usually dropped from searches because they typically don't convey much information compared to the other words in a search. We might also treat words as optional if they're redundant given the other words in your search. For example, in UV sun protective swimwear, requiring "UV" to appear might exclude high quality pages, so we may exclude "UV" in compiling your results.
Even when words are treated as optional, they're still taken into account in assessing how relevant a page is to your query. For example, Google shows different results for University of Pennsylvania than we do for University in Pennsylvania.
Generally, excluding common words allows us to return better search results. If one of these words is important to your search, you can precede it with a plus sign "+" to ensure that Google requires it to appear in every search result. So, for example, a search for +The Red Violin will return only results that include the word "the."
Alternate words
Google usually returns pages that use all of the words you included in your search. Sometimes, however, we'll consider other words as substitutes if we think that doing so will improve the results we show you. For example, if you search for dance marathons, Google's results might include pages that talk about a dance marathon. On the result pages, we'll highlight occurrences of both the original and alternate search terms that appear in titles and snippets.
There are several ways Google identifies alternate words:
* Stemming finds alternate forms of a word, such as singular or plural variations.
* Synonyms can help someone searching for UC Berkeley law school find pages that mention Boalt law school.
* Abbreviations expand search terms so that rc model airplanes might also find pages about radio control model airplanes.
* Words might be combined or split so that we return pages about organic dog food when you enter organic dogfood.
* Because it's often easier to type words without accents, a search for a coup d'etat might return pages that talk about a coup d'état..
Usually, the alternate words we add to your results will help your search, but we understand that in some cases you want to restrict your search to precisely the terms you enter. In that case, you can precede a word with a plus sign "+" to tell Google you're looking for that exact term. So, for example, if you search for dance +marathons, we'll only return pages that are talking about more than one.
Phrase searches
Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms.
"the long and winding road"
Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("George Washington"), lyrics ("the long and winding road"), or other famous phrases ("This was their finest hour").
Negative terms
If your search term has more than one meaning (bass, for example, could refer to fishing or music) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid.
For example, here's how you'd find pages about bass-heavy lakes, but not bass-heavy music:
"bass -music"
Note: when you include a negative term in your search, be sure to include a space before the minus sign.
Labels: Advanced SEO, SEO, SEO Concepts, Useful tips for SEO
