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Search Engine Syntax & Features Comparison Chart
An understanding of the syntax differences among search engines is essential to mastery of these tools and the ability to force them to return the precise results you want. Many of these sites appear to operate similarly, at least on the surface. Yet they can differ substantially in how they understand queries and allow you to filter results, as well as how they rank the hits returned. Consult our search basics page for information on syntax and operators, then experiment with the search engines in the chart provided. To click through to the various search engines, use the HTML chart below. We have also provided a PDF version of the chart for printing.
Search Engine |
Boolean |
Default |
Phrase |
Wildcards |
Case sensitive |
Prefixes |
Familyfilter |
+ - ( ) AND, OR, AND NOT, NEAR (
) (Simple Srch) |
Phrase,
then AND |
" " |
Yes * 1-5 characters, must type first 3
characters |
No |
anchor, applet, domain, host, image, like, link, text, title, url |
Yes.
Password
protected. |
|
OR - + to include stop words |
AND |
" " |
Whole word wildcard (*) |
No |
filetype, daterange, cache, link, related, info, spell, stocks, site, intitle, allintitle,
inurl, allinurl |
Yes |
|
AND, OR, ANDNOT, ( ), +, - ( ) means OR |
AND |
" " |
No |
No |
site, url, link, title, language, filesize, filetype |
Yes |
|
+, - |
AND |
" " |
No |
No |
language |
Yes |
|
-, OR + to include stop words |
AND |
" " |
No |
No |
intitle, inurl, site, inlink, lang, afterdate, beforedate, between
date |
No |