Skip to main content

Use Google Verbatim to Get Exact Search Results

When you enter a query into the search box on Google and press Enter, Google takes the query and runs a “complex set of algorithms that expands and improves the query you’ve typed to find the best results”. In an effort to improve search results Google will automatically correct spelling, substitute some keywords with synonyms, make personalization based on your search history, match similar terms to those in your query, and sometimes even drop words from the query. Unfortunately, rather than improving the results it often pollutes it by bringing in lots of unrelated links.

To get results matching the exact query Google suggests users to add quotes “ ” to the query. Previously Google supported the ‘+’ operator that helped users search for specific terms. Now the plus operator is replaced by double quotes which requires you to include every keyword you want to force search on Google within quotes. To make this easier on the users, Google has rolled out a new search option called Verbatim.

Just click "show more search tools" in the sidebar, select "Verbatim" and Google will no longer modify your query.

verbatim-without

verbatim-with

With the Verbatim tool, you can search using the exact keywords you typed.

The searches you make on Google are usually improved to help minimize your time spent searching and get you the information you really want. Here are some of the improvements Google makes:

  • suggest spelling corrections and alternative spellings
  • personalize your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
  • include synonyms of your search terms to find related results
  • find results that match similar terms to those in your query
  • search for words with the same stem, like "running" when you search for [ run ]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

69 alternatives to the default Facebook profile picture

If you have changed the default Facebook profile picture and uploaded your own, it’s fine. But if not, then why not replace that boring picture of the guy with a wisp of hair sticking out of his head with something different and funny?

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.