Improving your searches

Here are some tips for improved searching:

• Narrow it down.

If your search is returning too many pages, try adding words. For instance, if you type "Paris," you'll get pages about the city of Paris, the Paris casino in Las Vegas, and Paris from Greek mythology. Type "Paris France" to limit the search to pages about the city.

• Use quotation marks.

If you are looking for an article titled "How to bathe a cat," put quotation marks around the phrase.

• Try a negative search.

You can subtract words from your search. For instance, type "paris -france" to search for all pages that contain the word "paris" and aren't about Paris, France.

• Capitalization doesn't matter.

"Paris France," "paris France," and "paris france" are treated the same way by the Google search engine.

• For less typing, omit common words.

Small and common words are omitted by search, so searching for "bathe a cat," "bathe the cat," and "bathe cat" are all the same.

• Don't worry about word endings.

The search engine snips off certain word endings before searching. For instance, "bathe a cat" and "bathing a cat" are treated the same way.