You can increase the accuracy of your searches by adding operators that fine-tune your keywords. Most of the options listed on this page can be entered directly into our search box or selected from the Advanced Search page.

Additionally, our search engine supports several advanced operators which are query words that have special meaning to Google. For a complete list, click here.

Automatic Exclusion of Common Words

Our search ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Our search will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box.

" + " Search

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around 2 or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search.

For example, to search for Star Wars, Episode I, use:

" - " Search

Sometimes what you're searching for has more than one meaning; "bass" can refer to fishing or music. You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to avoid. (Be sure to include a space before the minus sign.)

For example, to find web pages about bass that do not contain the word "music", type:

Phrase Search

Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") will appear together in all results exactly as you have entered them. Phrase searches are especially useful when searching for famous sayings or proper names.

"OR" Search

Our search supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase OR between terms.

For example, to search for a vacation in either London or Paris, just type:

Domain Restrict

If you know the website you want to search but aren't sure where the information is located within that site, you can use Google to search only that website (or domain). Enter your keywords in the top section of the Advanced Search form.

In the "Domain" drop down box, select "Only" to only return results from a particular domain. Select "Don't" to exclude results from a particular domain.

Enter the domain name in the text box to the right e.g. http://www.att.net, or just www.att.net.

Click "Go" and Google searches within your domain only.

If you selected "Don't" return results from this site or domain, Google excludes that domain from the search.

For example, to find admission information on Stanford University's site, enter:

SafeSearch Filtering

SafeSearch Filtering screens for sites that contain pornography and explicit sexual content and eliminates them from search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, Google's filter uses proprietary technology that checks keywords and phrases, URLs, and Open Directory categories.

AT&T Worldnet has turned on filtering on all web searches to prevent unintended display of adult content. You will still see filtered results relevant to keywords related to adult topics, for example, a keyword search on "sex" will return medical or research information regarding human sexuality.

To turn off filtering completely, select the "No filtering" option. Caution: "No Filtering" will display Adult content in search results based on the keywords you enter.

Please make sure that "Filter Using SafeSearch" is selected when viewing web search results with children. The SafeSearch filtering option you select on the Preferences page will be persistant on all web search and directory results unless you change or resave your preferences".

Our partner, Google strives to keep filtering information as current and comprehensive as possible through continual crawling of the Web and by incorporating updates from user suggestions. If you find sites that contain offensive content in your results, even with SafeSearch activated, please send an email with the site's URL to safesearch@google.com and Google will investigate it.

Preferences Help Customize your results using the Preferences page. Google enables you to save certain search preferences, including the number of results to show per page, and whether or not to use SafeSearch filtering. Click here to set your language and filtering options, or read on for more information...

Search Language Google's language search feature lets you restrict your searches to pages in the language(s) that you choose. Because these language-restricted searches only look at pages from a small portion of the web, however, Google recommends the "Search web pages written in any language" option as a default. Specifying a search language can be quite useful, however, when you want to search for content that is specific to a particular language or region.

Number of Results Google's default setting of 10 provides the fastest results. However, you can increase the number of results displayed per page to 20 to see more listings per search query.

Results Window Check this preference box to open your results in a new browser window. This enables you to look at individual search results, while retaining the original search results page.

SafeSearch Filtering Many Google users prefer not to have adult sites included in their search results. Google's SafeSearch screens for sites that contain pornography and explicit sexual content and eliminates them from search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, Google's filter uses advanced proprietary technology that checks keywords and phrases, URLs and Open Directory categories.

To turn off filtering completely, select "Off". The filtering option you select on the Preferences page will remain on until you change and resave your preferences. You can also adjust your SafeSearch settings on the Advanced Search on a per search basis.

Google strives to keep the filtering information as current and comprehensive as possible through continual crawling of the Web and by incorporating updates from user suggestions. If you find sites that contain offensive content in your results, even with SafeSearch activated, please send an email with the site's URL to safesearch@google.com and we will investigate it.