How to Search for Phrases and Expressions in Search Engines

Use quotation marks. If you are looking for an exact phrase such as "to be or not be. That is the question" put the phrase in quotation marks. This will tell the search engine you want to search for this phrase being used verbatim around the web.

Choose words. Think about words & phrases that can uniquely describe what you're searching. Bear in mind that some search engines automatically match multiple/conjugated forms of some words, while others require an exact match, even for singular or plural words. (Example: In 2005, AOL, A9, Google & Netscape by default also looked for some singular nouns or conjugated verbs "prevent"/ "preventing" and matched "e-mail" to "email"; whereas MSN Search & Yahoo required exact matches to words specified as spelled.)

Connect words. Enter connected phrases with hyphens or quotes as a single search-item, such as "baking German-chocolate-cake" or "secret-revelation robe": connecting separate words can pinpoint the search, whereas, putting many separate words would begin matching millions of webpages containing only a few of all the words (especially after more than 3 words/items are specified).

Connect phrases. Use logical connectors or parentheses for more complex searches such as: "blue-bird OR black-bird OR blackbird" to match any of several similar items, and find a blackbird as one or two words "black bird" etc.

Sub-search. Be prepared to "search within resulting webpages" to further pinpoint information that might be buried hundreds or thousands of pages down the list of matching pages.