Consideration about Google Basic Search

Yesterday morning, I took a look at Basics of Search in Google Search Guides, and I learnt that Google refines the query or searching terms we sent to Google searching engine; therefore, sometimes Google returns the pages that do not exactly match the information we need.

However, according to the explanation in Basics of Search, to get the results exactly matching the keywords contained in our queries, we can use the plus operator (+). For example, if my query sent to Google searching engine is UC Berkeley law school, Google will find the information for me, but in Google’s way called Synonyms. Then all web pages whose contents include Boalt law school, which is the law school at UC Berkeley, will also be the results Google sends to me. Now, we can see the fact is that Google does refine the results for me because I entered and wanted to look for something about UC Berkeley law school, but actually, some of the results Google provides for me is the information about Boalt law school. To put it another way, sometimes, Google is sweet and considerate to refine the results for the users. Nevertheless, the refinement sometimes introduces unnecessary information to the users.

Fortunately, we can require Google to return the pages precisely matching our entered searching words by the plus operator (+). We can see what a significant role the plus operator can play by observing the following searching results record:

-

-

Searching Terms	Results
UC Berkeley law school	892,000†
UC +Berkeley +law +school	755,000†

-

† ^{These results were captured at 11:03 PM on Saturday, April 26, 2008.}

-

-