Google Phrase Search

A few years ago I’d have said that phrase search using quotes was an essential Google tool. Since then Google has greatly improved its phrase recognition. Explicit phrase search is less necessary now but does still come in handy sometimes, especially when researching more obscure search terms.

What Is Phrase Search?

When you type in a search query with more than one word, Google might return pages where the words appear anywhere. They won’t necessarily be together or in the order you specify. For example imaging you were trying to find information on the Rock Castle in Tennessee. You could just type in:

However if you do that you’ll also get loads of hits referring not to Rock Castle but to Castle Rock – the same words in a different order. You might also get pages that say something like “There was a big rock by the castle wall” where the words are split up.

To get round this you can put your search query in quotes:

This tells Google to only return results where the words appear right next to each other in the order specified. Now all those Castle Rock pages that were cluttering up your search results suddenly disappear. Well, most of them anyway.

Search terms in quotes can also be combined with other words, for example:

You won’t use phrase search every day but when you do it can be an invaluable tool for telling the search engine exactly what you want.

More Google Search Tips

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