Search Engine Math:

Addition:

Place a + sign in front of words that must be present on the web page.

The + sign equals the Boolean search term AND.
Example:   +pizza +pepperoni +onions

Subtraction:
Placing a minus sign in front of word tells the search engine to subtract pages that contain that particular word.

The minus sign equals the Boolean search term NOT.
Example:   +pizza +pepperoni -olives 

Multiplication:
Multiply by conducting a phrase search.

Place quotation marks around the phrase.
Example:
  +”pan pizza” +pepperoni -olives
 

Writing Successful Search Statements:

Be specific.
Ex.  Hurricane Hugo

Whenever possible, use nouns and objects as keywords.
Ex.  Fiesta dinnerware plates cups saucers

Put most important terms first in your keyword list; put + sign in front of each word.
Ex.  +hybrid+electric+gas+vehicles

Use at least three keywords in your query.
Ex.  Interaction vitamins drugs

Combine keywords, whenever possible, into phrases.
Ex.  “search engine tutorial”

Avoid common words, like water, unless part of a phrase.
Ex.  “bottled water”

Think about words you’d expect to find in the body of the page and use them as keywords.
Ex.  anorexia bulimia eating disorder

Write down your search statement and revise it before you type it into a search engine query box.

Type keywords and phrases in lower case to find both lower and upper case versions.  Capitals usually return only exact matches.
Ex.  president

Use truncation (or stemming) and wildcards (*) to look for variations in spelling and word form.
Ex.  librar*  returns library, libraries, librarian, etc.
Ex.  col*r  returns color and colour