Computer and Web Articles

When you put quotation marks around a set of words in your Google search box, you’re essentially telling Google to consider those exact words in that exact order without any changes whatsoever. You’re telling Google you mean serious business and you know exactly what you want to find.

It’s important to remember, though, that using quotes can potentially eliminate the exact results you may be searching for. Not good. Here’s an example.

Let’s say someone was stalking me. They want to locate every single instance of my name on the web and learn as much as possible about my life. So they head over to Google and, because they want to search specifically for me, they type in “Erin Pheil,” putting quotation marks around my name. Doing so means that they won’t be looking at results showing Rebecca Pheil or Erin Pfiel or anything else that’s … kind of close. All the results Google will list for my stalker will contain the exact phrase “Erin Pheil.”

So where’s the problem?

It’s quite possible that there are many pages on the web displaying my name—but doing so with, say, my middle initial. Or my full middle name. Unfortunately for my stalker, none of the pages on the web that showed my name only as Erin S. Pheil are going to show up in my stalker’s Google results. This is because by putting quotes around “Erin Pheil,” my stalker specifically told Google he wanted results with no other letters or words between the “Erin” and the “Pheil.”

On the other hand, if my stalker had instead searched for “Erin S. Pheil” (using the quotation marks, of course), he would have received zero results that displayed my name as “Erin Pheil.”

In sum: use quotation marks around sets of words when you’re searching—but use them wisely and be wary of the “you could be cutting out relevant results” pitfall.