We can run an advanced search in Google by directly typing a combination of keywords and search operators into the search bar. Below is an explanation of the main operators you might want to use in your own searches.
| Keyword/Search operator | Intended outcome |
| “Ovarian cancer” | Use “double quotation marks” to retrieve documents that contain an exact phrase |
| headache OR migraine | Use the OR operator to retrieve documents that contain either search term or all search terms |
| Sickle cell disease | Use multiple search terms together to retrieve documents that contain all the search terms |
| Stroke -heat | Use a hyphen - before a search term to retrieve documents that exclude that search term |
| allintitle: “Chronic fatigue syndrome” | Use the allintitle: operator to retrieve documents that include that search term or exact phrase in the title of the document |
| headache OR migraine site:ac.uk | Adding the site: operator at the end of your search will limit your search to particular websites i.e. site:ac.uk, site:nhs.uk or site:gov.uk |
| Stroke -heat filetype:pdf | Use the filetype: operator at the end of your search to specify the type of file you want to retrieve i.e. filetype:pdf, filetype:doc or filetype:ppt |
The other way we can run an advanced search is by selecting the advanced search option. On the Google homepage, click on 'Settings' and select 'Advanced search'.
We can then enter our search terms in the predefined fields to describe our search.
If you need to narrow down your results, there are filters you can use such as language, region, and file type. When you have entered your search terms and selected your filters, click on 'Advanced Search'.
