Google Search OR Operator, Exact Phrase and Exclude Words

Say you do SEO for a store that sells coffee gear, and you've been asked to write a page about the manual coffee grinder.

Before you write a word, you need to know: who sells this product? What do people ask about it? What do they complain about?

The first thing you'd naturally do is open Google and type:

And the result? Everything. Product pages, category pages, articles, and electric grinders that have nothing to do with your question.

The problem isn't Google. You asked it a broad question, so it gave you a broad answer.

In this course we'll learn how to narrow the question. And the tool we'll use is called search operators.

What's a search operator?

A search operator is a symbol or a word you type into the search box that changes how Google picks its results.

Like quotes "", the minus sign -, the word OR, and operators like site: and intitle:.

Today we start with the first three. Those alone will change the way you search.

Before we start: how we'll test

In every lesson you'll find tables like the one coming up. The table applies the operator to a few pages from real sites: coffee brands like Timemore and Baratza, shops, eBay, and coffee reviews.

✓ means this page can show up for this query. – means the operator left it out.

A normal search: all the words, anywhere

Let's start with no operator at all:

Look at the Coffeeness article: "Manual vs Electric Coffee Grinder".

The title doesn't say "manual coffee grinder" like that. But all three words are on the page, each in a different spot.

That's a normal search: Google looks for all the words, anywhere on the page, in any order.

And the "Hand Coffee Grinders" page didn't show up in the simulation, because the word "manual" isn't on it. Real Google might bring it up, because it understands that a hand grinder and a manual grinder are the same thing.

Quotes: this exact phrase

Now put the same words between quotes:

Now you're telling Google: I want this phrase, with the same words, in the same order.

The Coffeeness article is gone.

Why?

The words really are on it, but not next to each other in that order.

Watch the shape of the quote mark

Use the straight quote " on your keyboard, not the curly quotes a word processor puts in. And put one before the phrase and one after it. If you forget to close the quote, Google won't know where the phrase ends.

When do quotes hurt you?

Go back to the table and look at the Coffee Parts page: "Hand Coffee Grinders".

It's a page about exactly the same product. But they wrote "hand", not "manual".

If you're looking for what people say about the product, quotes will lose you everyone who wrote it a different way.

So:

An example where the wording matters: a grinder's model name.

Without the quotes, Google might bring you any page that has Timemore and C3 anywhere on it, even if it's about a different model.

Excluding: the minus sign

Back to the first problem: the results have electric grinders in them.

A minus sign before a word means: "drop any page that has this word".

Look at two things.

First: the article comparing manual and electric grinders is gone, even though it could be really useful for your page. Why? Because it has the word "electric" in it.

Second: the eBay page "Coffee Grinder 500W" stayed, even though it's an electric grinder. Why? Because the word "electric" isn't written on it.

A common mistake: a space after the minus

Here the minus sign is separated from the word. Google ignores it, and treats "electric" as a normal word that has to be there.

So you got the exact opposite of what you wanted: the electric ones only.

The rule: a space before the minus sign, and no space after it.

Excluding a phrase

The minus works with quotes too:

That drops the pages with the phrase "espresso machine". But a page with the word "machine" on its own stays.

OR: this or that

Back to the "hand" problem. You want both wordings in one search.

OR means: either one is enough.

The Coffee Parts page is back, because it has the second phrase.

OR has to be in capitals

Google reads a lowercase or as a normal word. So now you're looking for both phrases plus the word or. And there's no page like that.

There's also a symbol that does the same job as OR: the vertical bar |. If you took our Regex course, you'll remember it: same meaning, "or".

Brackets: group the alternatives

What if the difference is only one word? You don't need to write the phrase twice.

Read it as: (manual or hand), then coffee grinder.

There are no quotes here, so the words can be anywhere. That's why the comparison article came back.

The asterisk: a word you don't know

Sometimes you know the shape of the phrase, but there's a word in the middle you aren't sure of.

An asterisk inside the quotes means: a word goes here, or more than one, anything.

This query brings up "manual coffee grinder", "manual burr grinder" and "manual spice grinder". The asterisk catches whatever word is in the middle.

Really useful when you're looking for the different wordings of the same phrase, or finishing a phrase you can't remember a word of.

Read the query part by part

Just like we did in Regex: don't read a query as one block. Take it apart.

This query says: this exact phrase, with "problems" or "complaints", and without "electric".

And that's a real SEO question: what problems do people run into with a manual grinder? The answer could be a whole section of your page, called something like "Manual grinder problems and how to deal with them".

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

The practical test

A thinking test

If you want to know what people say about the manual grinder, do you start with "manual coffee grinder" in quotes, or without them?

Think before you read on.

The answer: without them.

Your goal right now is to discover how people talk. And quotes shut out anyone who wrote it a different way. Quotes come later, once you know the wording you care about.

And that's the most important thing in this lesson: every operator you add changes the question you're asking Google. Ask yourself first: what exactly do I want?

Before the next lesson

So far you have:

• "..." the exact phrase, in the same order.
• -word excludes any page that has the word.
• OR or | this or that.
• ( ) groups the alternatives into one part.
• * inside quotes: a word you don't know.

In the next lesson we'll ask a different question. Not "what's written on the page", but "which site is the page on". And that's where we learn the operator anyone doing SEO uses most: site:.