Requiring terms to be present

Translated: require Gingrich, require hunting

Finds "Newt Gingrich on the male hunting instinct", and "the male hunting instinct of Gingrich".
Does not find the lowercase "gingrich", nor the abbreviated "hunt Gingrich".

Requiring one term and Forbiding the presence of another term

Translated: forbid anarchy, require hunting

Finds "hunting and gathering", "hunting Godot", and lowercase "male hunting instinct".
Does not find "Hunting and Gathering" nor "hunting anarchy".

Searching for a phrase

This can be a very powerful approach. A "phrase" is two or more words that must appear exactly in order.

Translated: require the phrase "males are biologically driven"

Finds "males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes".

The Wildcard (*)

The wildcard symbol (*) allows you to "truncate" a word. You can enter the root of a word and find all its various endings.

Translated: find all words beginning with "biolog" not matter how the word ends.

Finds "biology", "biological", "biologically".
You can use the wildcard at the beginning and the end of a word. "*mouse* will find "mousey" and "mouse" and "dormouse".

Using the boolean OR

Translated: prefer Gingrich, prefer piglets

Finds "Gingrich says men are basically little piglets", and "wallow in a ditch like little piglets".
Documents with both terms appear higher in the list.

The boolean AND

The boolean AND requires the word be present. This works just like the + noted above. The "and term must appear in front of the term.

Translated: require newt (case insensitive), require words starting with "piglet"

Finds "Real life thoughts from Newt", "little piglets", "wallow in a ditch like little piglets".
The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.

The boolean NOT

The boolean NOT is useful for excluding pages with the selected word or phrase.

Translated: require Alice (case sensitive), require UNIX (case sensitive), forbid eunuch, prefer grep

First lists "Alice in UNIX land", then "grep UNIX".
Does not list lowercase "alice in unix land", nor forbidden "picture of eunuch".

Ignored terms and using the phrase and wildcard in a search

This is a more complex search. Certain common words, like "where" and "is" are ignored by the search engine. If you feel you are sure of the phrase you are looking for, then use the quote marks to surround, embrace, the phrase. Also, note here how you can truncate (use wildcards) at the beginning and end of a word.

Translated: ignores common words like where, is, and the - requires words containing "mouse"

Finds "mouse", "dormouse", and "mousey". To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where is the *mouse*?".