michigan informatics

How Search Engines Work: The Searching Algorithm

Each search engine interprets the terms you enter into the search box in different ways. Variable features which can affect your search results include:

• Operators
  Most search engines allow you to use operators such as AND, OR, and NOT in order to create complex search statements. The terms may need to be entered in upper case. Most also use the plus (+) sign to signal that a term must be included in the search results and a minus (-) sign to signal that a term must be excluded from the results.
• Phrase Searching
  Search engines will generally search for words as phrases when quotation marks are placed around the phrase. Some search engines may use a drop-down menu which offers the option of searching the terms as a phrase.
• Truncation
  Some search engines will automatically truncate the terms you enter. This means that the search engine will not only search for the term exactly as you spelled it, but will also search on that term with alternate endings and as a plural. Some search engines will only search for variable endings on certain common words.