Laurie asks:
Is there or will there ever be a way to search the Internet for exactly what I type in – punctuation, symbols, case sensitivity and all? Search engines tend to ignore certain characters and punctuation.
Know someone who can answer? Share the question with your friends!
Hide 6 Comments
Laurie,
There is one such Google Search Trick. Go to Google and search using the verbatim string (wrapping your search query with double quotes). You can ignore certain characters and words using the exclude operator (-) as well.
Example (verbatim search): “This will return exact matches only, including punctuation! Make sure to use double quotes.”
Link to sample search query
Example (exude operator): “This will ignore any results with the text ‘test’, make sure there is no space between the ‘-’ and the word you wish to exclude.” -test
Link to sample search query
Interested in more Google Search Tricks? Read these related articles:
• 3 Google Tricks When You Don’t Know What to Search For
• 3 Hidden Features In Google Advanced Search You May Not Know About
• The 5 Coolest ‘Google Search Hacks’ You Probably Never Realized Existed
• How to Search YouTube Like a PRO with Google Advanced Operators
Does this help?
- Jeff
I think the double quotes thing was changed recently. Now, you have to select “verbatim” as a search query type from the options on the left.
It’s working fine for me. Just in case, using Google’s Advanced Search interface should be more stable throughout all of their changes.
Yes, verbatim removes personalized search results , spelling corrections etc and enables exact search.
So, double quotes, verbatim and simple search,
all three returned different results when I tried.
But none of them helped in case sensitive and special character search.
you question has two points, and you are right about both.
(1) Special characters :Google, yahoo, bing they all will ignore some symbols, even if you use double quotes.
Eg, if you search for 2% with or without double quotes, it will return the results for “2″ only.
So if something is not supported by goole, you will not find it on google with any tricks.
Try this:
http://www.google.co.in/search?q=“2%”
http://www.google.co.in/search?q=“2$”
Now, I found this search engine called Symbolhound:
http://symbolhound.com
I don’t how well it works, but it does return results with special characters.
How google handles special characters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=suTDT6-Q8NE
(2) case sensitive search:
That also is not supported by google with or without ”"
I found this case sensitive search:
http://case-sensitive-search.appspot.com
from:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/search/case-sensitive-google-search/6279
So, I hope your search result will get better with this.
“parent directory ” MP3 -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
In the place of MP3 replace with the text you want to search