GoalUse plus, minus and quotation marks to make a search more exact.
New words
plus sign (+) · a sign you type before a word to ask the search engine to keep itminus sign (-) · a sign you type before a word to leave out results with that wordquotation marks · marks around words that must stay together in the same ordernarrow down · to make a search smaller and more exact
Explanation
Sometimes a plain search is still not exact enough. Many search engines understand three little tricks. The plus sign (+) asks the search engine to keep a small word it might skip, like how or to. The minus sign (-) leaves out results that contain a word you do not want. If you want stars in the sky and not football stars, you can type star sky -football. Quotation marks keep words together in the same order, so “paper kite” looks for those two words side by side. These tricks help you narrow down a search. But not every search engine works in exactly the same way, so try them with a teacher or a family member and see what happens.
Trick
What you type
What it does
+
how +to fly a kite
keeps the little word “to”
-
star sky -football
leaves out pages about football
“ ”
“paper kite”
finds the two words side by side
Worked examples
Nour is searching for fish of the Red Sea. She types “Red Sea” fish. The quotation marks keep Red Sea together, so she gets fewer pages about other seas.
Mina wants facts about fish of the Nile. A search for Nile fish also shows restaurant pages. She types Nile fish -menu -restaurant, and those pages disappear from the results.
Habiba types how to draw a camel, but the search engine skips the little word to. She types how +to draw a camel and asks it to keep the word.
Class activity
Search detectives. Work with a partner on paper. One of you says an aim, the other writes the search with one trick. Aims: (1) pages about your local football club, but not pages about shirts and shops; (2) the exact phrase “water cycle”; (3) keep the little word to in how to make a paper plane. Then swap. Which trick did you use for each aim? Check with a grown-up whether the search engine they use understands the tricks.
Practice
1
Which trick keeps words together in the same order?
Quotation marks.
2
You want pages about stars in the sky but not about football stars. What do you add to the search?
A minus sign before the word football: star sky -football.
3
Write a search for pages about tortoises, the animal, that leaves out pages about toys.
For example: tortoise animal -toy.
4
Which search looks for the exact phrase school garden? Say the letter.
Search
A school garden
B “school garden”
C school -garden
B, because quotation marks keep the two words together.
