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8-fold Logo     The Eight-fold Path to Right Searching: Tips, Tasks, & Tools

    course content by P. F. Anderson, pfa@umich.edu,
    presented by P. F. Anderson and Karen Reiman-Sendi.

Tip #6: The Plus Sign, +

Tips: Basics | "1" | (2) | 3=OR | 4=site | 5=filetype | +6 | -7 | ~8 |
More Tips (Refinements): Compare | Truncate | Terms | Quality | Features | Features 2 | Expert | Redux

Use this symbol directly before the term to be searched with no intervening spaces. This technique works primarily in Google. Please note that the plus sign (+) functions in Google in a manner completely separate and distinct from the boolean operator AND, which may not be true in other search engines.


1. Use the plus sign to force the inclusion of stop words in phrase searches. Google's Stopwords (Automatic Exclusion of Common Words) (NOTE: This is not necessary in Yahoo, which searches stop words in phrase searches.)
Example:


2. Use this to search foreign words with diacritics exactly as spelled. (Google usually disregards diacritics. NOTE: This is not necessary in Yahoo, which searches the words exactly as typed.) This is especially important for false cognates, words that appear similar but have different meanings.
Examples:
3. In the past, this used to force a re-ranking of the search display to make the selected term more significant in the results. It does not seem to work this way in Google anymore, but hopefully someday this functionality will return.
Examples:

Tips: Basics | "1" | (2) | 3=OR | 4=site | 5=filetype | +6 | -7 | ~8 |
More Tips (Refinements): Compare | Truncate | Terms | Quality | Features | Features 2 | Expert | Redux

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"Nor is it every apple I desire, Nor that which pleases every palate best; 'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require, Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request, Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife, Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife: No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of life." -- Thoreau, Henry David. "The Fruit and Its Flavor." Wild Apples. URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/wldpp10.txt
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