This is the key to finding the information you need. Start with the obvious – if you're looking for general information on Hawaii, try Hawaii. But it's often advisable to use multiple search terms; if you're planning a Hawaiian vacation, you'll do better with vacation Hawaii than with either vacation or Hawaii by themselves. And vacation Hawaii golf may produce even better (or, depending on your perspective, worse) results.

You might also ask yourself if your search terms are sufficiently specific. It's better to search on luxury hotels Maui than on tropical island hotels. But choose your search terms carefully; Google looks for the search terms you chose, so luxury hotels Maui will probably deliver better results than really nice places to spend the night in Maui.

Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case.

For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.

By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "AND" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms.

For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type vacation hawaii.

Google supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include word A or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms.

For example: wellesley OR paris       women OR woman.

Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms.

Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("George Washington"), lyrics ("the long and winding road"), or other famous phrases ("This was their finest hour").

Google ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Google will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+ " sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search ("where are you") are included in the search.

If your search term has more than one meaning (bass, for example, could refer to fishing or music) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign ("- ") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid. (Be sure to include a space before the "-" sign.)

For example, here's how you'd find pages about bass-heavy lakes, but not bass-heavy music: bass-heavy -music.

The advanced search page has a more detailed form to facilitate searching with a number of parameters.

Other advanced operators work with Google's web search rather than this local search. You may read about these on the Google Web Search Features page.