Boolean Searching

 

Or Command

Thus you search "Cars or Automobiles"

You will get more results than you would by searching either "cars" or "automobiles" on its own.  Or is intended primarily to avoid having to do separate searches on words that are closely related to one another.

 

And Command

Thus you search "homeless youth and education."

You get fewer results than you would if you searched either term on its own.  AND is intended to help you narrow down your search topic.  It demands that both terms separated by AND be in the final results.
 

NOT Command

This command helps you screen out results that you don't want in your result set.  Here's a typical NOT command:

(cars or automobiles) not Europe*

The term Europe* (note the truncation * which enables you to search for Europe/European, etc. at the same time) is screened out of all results in the search "cars or automobiles."

 

Created February 4, 2010 by William Badke