Search for a specific word or phrase in the source. Search for a specific word or phrase in the text. Search for a specific word or phrase in the title. (search for the word sleep within five words of the word anxiety) Search for specific words in a specific number of words in your phrase. For example: filetype:pdf, filetype:video, ext:docx. You can restrict results based on a certain file type. (Search for the phrase sleep deprivation.) Boolean Search is also great for finding specific file types. For example, search for 'sausage biscuits' (with the quotes included) to show only results for phrases that include the words together, without anything between them. When searching for a phrase rather than a single word, group the words with quotation marks. (Search for the term academic and its synonyms.) Combine Boolean Searches and Use Exact Phrases. (Limits results to results other than Wikipedia.) (Limits results to only those with bears and not the term Chicago.) Using parentheses in your Boolean search, is a lot like using them in arithmetic - the search. Take a look at the illustrations below - the search terms and Boolean Operators are identical, but the parentheses create two very different searches. (Search for content that contains scholarly OR academic.) You can use parentheses to build a search with a combination of Boolean Operators. (Search for content that contains both vegetarianism and obesity.) Google also has a few additional operators that work to refine results.īelow are common boolean operators that work when searching within Google and Google Scholar, as well as an example of each. Using these operators, you are able to focus your search on the results that will be most helpful. some support nesting, some databases support symbols like '&', etc.Boolean operators are words or symbols used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search.

Not all databases handle Boolean operators in the same way (e.g.

May bring back too many, too few, or irrelevant results if keywords are not carefully selected Boolean Search uses a combination of keywords and the three main Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) to organize and sift through your searches.

Making connections between keywords or emphasizing relationships between keywords when searching.

Narrowing down or broadening your search results by connecting search terms together using logic Boolean OperatorsBoolean OperatorsExample-site: Exclude a website from the searchBears -site: (Limits results to results other than Wikipedia.) Synonyms of termacademic (Search for the term academic and its synonyms.) Exact phrasesleep deprivation (Search for the phrase sleep deprivation.

This will narrow down your research results because the search engine will bring back only resources about the first search term (cats), but exclude any resources that include the second search term (dogs).

Also, when you need to do something specific, for example, find all mentions of your brand that don’t contain links to it. For example, when your brand name is a common word. The Boolean operator NOT tells the search engine that you want to find information about the first search term, but nothing about the second. Boolean search is used when you require stricter search criteria to eliminate unwanted results. This will broaden your search results because the search engine will bring back any results that have either search term in them. The Boolean operator OR tells the search engine that you want to find information about either search term you've entered. This will narrow down your search results because the search engine will only bring back results that include both search terms. The Boolean operator AND tells a search engine that you want to find information about two (or more) search terms. These are logic-based words that help search engines narrow down or broaden search results. Boolean searching uses operators: words like AND, OR, and NOT. The words black and shoes will return results that contain the. They can be used to get more accurate search results. Boolean searching is used to help find search results faster and with more precision. The most common Boolean operators are AND, OR and NOT (always in capitals).

Boolean search engine examples