Use Boolean on Google? Check This Out

booleanstrings Uncategorized 3 Comments

Let me get straight to the point. It seems like the Boolean operator AND – that is supposed to be implied – now does make a difference on Google.

Compare, for example,

digital AND games AND advertising Nyc | new-york “account manager ” intitle:resume OR inurl:resume -jobs

with

digital games AND advertising Nyc | new-york “account manager ” intitle:resume OR inurl:resume -jobs

(this is the search I happen to run at the moment; I don’t use AND’s in my practice but tried them per a student’s suggestion).

I am going to explore this. My preliminary advice to you is to stop using AND in your searches.

Comments 3

  1. Irina,

    One pattern that I’ve observed: –

    In first search string (AND) – there are lots of results with “Resumes” as keyword in title but Google has picked up because in URL it mentions as resume

    In second search – you do not have a single result with such pattern.

  2. I have not read the 25 tips, although I would like to.

    I’m not sure what the significance of the advice really is. Both queries use the operator AND
    If you want to eliminate AND then your query would look like this:

    digital games advertising Nyc | new-york “account manager ” intitle:resume OR inurl:resume -jobs

    That produces 349 results vs 1050 from your first example and 633 in your second example.

    So which do you prefer, more results or fewer?

    Personally I would start with a more formally constructed advanced query to get at the very best results:

    +(digital | electronic) +games +advertising +(Nyc | new-york | manhattan) “account manager ” intitle:resume OR inurl:resume -jobs -resumes -sample -“resume book”

    In other words, must have digital or electronic, must have games, must have advertising, must have Nyc or new york or manhattan, must have the exact phrase account manager with a trailing space, must have resume in the title tag or in the url, must not have jobs, must not have sample, must not have resume book

    And then if I needed more results, I would begin removing narrowing pieces of the query one at a time (e.g. the + signs).

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