If you learn to exclude the words and refine the Google search results, then this is one of the key skills you attain to deal with your Google searches and implement the search shortcuts. If you ask why, this is because once you find words to exclude from Google search, it becomes easier to make your search query sharper and highly targeted. You don’t have to view or go through the unnecessary results that are irrelevant to your requirements. This can also let digital marketing and content marketing services use modern web search and save their time while working with the search engine. You don’t require too much effort to learn these hacks, it just needs a basic understanding of every advanced search operator in Google to start with.

Google Search Operators

The commands that let you be more refined and specific about what you search on Google are called Google Search Operators or exclusion operators. They are the search techniques that allow you to interact with Google with your exact needs and obtain only the relevant search results to save your time and efforts. Here, we shall discuss how to obtain accurate results with these search modifiers on Google by excluding the words from your Google searches.

How it Works

If your search term is broad, then the chances are that Google finds some websites and pages with keywords relevant to what you had typed for. This need not be completely relevant to the user intent, ie, to what you initiated a search for.

For instance,

If you search on google “ pastry shops near me”, to figure out the best pastry selling shop near your locality for a direct visit and purchase.

You get many results out of this search phrase, which could be like the following:

This could include:

Cake shops

Pastry covers shops

Desserts and cakes

Online Pastries

Pastry shop banners

and so on.

If you opt for a broad search, then the results you get from Google would be broad and out of the context.

However, you can refine your search based on the kind of pastry shop or the particular location you wish to check, and exclude other mentioned shops. With this, you get only what you require and search becomes easier.

Want to know how to make your searches crisp and precise with an exclusion clause? 

Here are the ways you can adopt to exclude the words and make your Google search results more specific.

How to Exclude Words From Google Search?

Minus sign excluding Command (-)

A minus sign (-) used for your Google search can help you exclude words from the search.

 The minus sign tells Google directly that you don’t require those results which contain some words, particularly you have mentioned.

For example, 

 Imagine that you would like to buy some drawing paper rolls for your personal needs. And you start searching Google with basic text searches like ” paper rolls “.

Once you go through the results, you come to know that the results you get are mostly based on tissue paper and thermal paper rolls. This is nowhere related to what you wanted, and all happened just because the input was not refined and relevant.

Now, you do a better-refined search function with the help of a minus search operator command for the two-word phrases like “tissue” and “thermal” and try to get the results again.

Try a google search in the search bar like shown below.

Paper rolls -tissue -thermal

And Hit Search, now you can see the most refined list with only the accurate answer in front of you.

2. Quotes excluding Command (” “) 

With this special command operator, you tell Google how you want to exclude terms from  Google search, it can be a particular term or phrase you might want to omit.

For instance, 

You wish to buy high-end headphones and focus more on the quality part rather than having any budget concerns.

This means you are not looking for any affordable options, and what you require is the best headphones with high-end functionality.

In this case, your google search can be as follows:

Place the entire phrase you need to avoid in quotations and add a minus sign just in front of the quoted phrase.

Google Search in the search box as  shown below:

headphones -“budget headphones”

Here when you put the words “budget headphones ” in quotes, Google excludes all the sites that mention this particular phrase.

Only relevant content results come to you and it makes your searches much easier.

3. “Site” excluding command

With this operator, it becomes pretty easy and one of the best search tips & tricks to filter your Google searches and include the site to exclude from Google search.

The “site:” command is helpful for you to exclude a particular website in your search results.

For instance, you wish to buy a smartphone and you don’t wish to get it from Flipkart.

Then for this particular search, you can use the site with a minus in the front part and exclude this specific site from your search results.

You may google it with search title like this.

smartphones -flipkart.com

This excludes Flipkart.com from the results and you can make the searches more user-specific.

4. Using a familiar site to search for similar sites

Apart from the aforementioned search refiners, When you wish to find websites that are related or similar when compared to the website you already know and are familiar with, you can use this operator. They are search-related websites you can find out easily with the command “related” followed by a colon symbol.

If you are looking for some companies with services similar to what you already know, and want to get information from them, you can use this command.

Google as shown below.

related:tcs.com

Here, you are looking for some companies’ sites related to software and technological solutions and operations similar to the TCS organization. You quickly get a list of all the companies with similar or related services and domain type.

5. Exact word/phrase match

Your searches become more precise instead of sentence-style queries when you search with an exact phrase or an exact word. Put your whole search in quotation marks to enable exact-match results for your search.

For instance, you wish to find results related to real-time trends and information on SEO metrics in 2021. 

Then google it in the below format:

 “SEO metrics 2021”

Here, you get the blogs, articles, or any other information related to the SEO metrics topic for the year 2021 in your search results.

Hence, you get up to date with a comprehensive list of the current information and trends of the particular topic.

6. Advanced Google Image Search

The advanced option for depth image searches and reverse image search in Google has the best options that help you to filter your search results. It has functionality that supports keywords for phrase match and exact match.

With this advanced image search page, you can also perform an image search concerning the parameters like size, image file, color, aspect ratio, etc.

7. Search images by size

You can also provide dimensions of the images manually in the image search bar and get the results only with these dimensions. Google for what item or a product you need an image for, along with the size search command and the dimensions in pixels.

For example, Google as shown below.

mango image size 1920×1080

This gives you the results of images with mangoes and the exact image size dimension of 1920×1080 pixels.

8. Search For Downloadables Using The Filetype Operator.

You can also exclude the search results with the help of a file type operator. With this, it becomes easier to search file types, which are downloadable like pdf files or research documents.

filetype: pdf sustainability

Here, when you give this particular operator command in your Google search, you can get all the downloadable pdf documents available online for sustainability and easily download them for your research, studies, or any other purposes.

Conclusion

Now you might have got an idea about the search tricks and how you can exclude words from Google Search. This lets you contribute to SEO and help search algorithm understand what you require.

SEM tools and social media marketing have gained popularity and most of the companies use marketing strategies and enterprise SEO to gain more visibility across Google as a part of everyday activities. However, this has added to the irrelevant results for every single Google search made. 

So, excluding the words from Google search results can save their time period, provide new information, and get relevant results and robust solution.

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