Google Advertising Tools, 2nd Edition

Anatomy of a Search Query

The primary Google search interface, the Google home page, is famously simple and uncluttered (as shown in Figure 7-8).

You enter a word or words, also called keywords, search terms, or queries, in the Google search form.

As you probably know, when you click the I’m Feeling Lucky button, Google opens the page that is the top-ranked search result for your query.

Figure 7-8. In its simplest form, Google search returns results for keywords entered in the search box

Note

Experienced researchers don’t usually bother with the I’m Feeling Lucky button because it is unlikely you will find what you need this way and it wastes time—even if it is fun!

Clicking the Google Search button opens the first page of Google’s search results for your query. Google’s search results pages also display AdWords ads that are contextually relevant to the query that generated the pages.

Google Syntax and Operators

Google searches support a number of operators, including:

AND

The AND operator tells Google to explicitly join two keywords in a query. It must be uppercase (cannot be written and).

OR

The OR operator, which can also be written using the pipe character (|), matches any of the terms joined with this operator in a query. It must be uppercase (cannot be written or).

+

The “plus” operator, called the inclusion operator, forces Google to include words, such as stop words (defined shortly), in ...