In order to speed up search queries, Google excludes common words like "where" and "how", as well as some single letters and digits. Google gives an example of this by using the movie title Star Wars Episode I. By doing a Google search for this title, you may also see entries for Star Wars Episode II. To work around this issue, there are two techniques that can be used:
The first technique, which will be discussed in another article, is by doing a phrase search. To do this, put quotation marks around the entire phrase you are searching. For example:
Searching for Star Wars Episode I may result in additional results that are not relevant, but by adding quotations and searching for "Star Wars Episode I", you will return those entries that match your phrase. In this case, the Google results page will have much more accurate listings.
Alternatively, another technique is to use the character + before any word that you want included in the search. This character indicates that the word is important to the search results and needs to be included in the query. Using the previous example, searching for Star Wars Episode +I will result in the I being significant to the search.
An important thing to note is that a phrase search with quotations looks at the search term as a whole, where as without quotation you are effectively searching for something like Star and Wars and Episode and I. The latter search could potentially results in sites about War-movie Stars (actors?) if there were not so many sites specifically referring to "Star Wars". This is a perfect example of why Google can appear to show inaccurate information if searches are not worded specifically enough.
Please feel free to try these techniques with the Google Search Boxes located above and below this article.
