By default, Google doesn't search for exactly what you typed in your query, and will make several guesses and assumptions about what you want, even discarding or ignoring part of your query altogether. In this article, we'll learn about how Google handles your query by default and what it ignores by default.
Note that it is possible to make Google search verbatim, in particular through The Double Quotes Search Operator, however there are a few things that Google ignores even if you use these methods. They will be marked below.
Google Ignores Short, Common Words
Google may ignore very common short words like auxiliary verbs (is, are, am, was, were, will), prepositions (in, on, to, at), and so on (and, or, that, which, etc.).
Google Ignores Upper-Case Letters
Google ignores casing altogether. It doesn't matter if you type Spongebob or spongebob or SPONGEBOB or SpONgeBoB, to Google it's all the same thing. So you don't need to start all your queries with a capital letter if you don't want to, you can just type everything in lower case and it will work just fine.
These are ignored even when double quotes are used, so there is no way to force Google to consider the casing.
Exceptionally, some words like OR (in all caps) or site (in lower case) have special meaning on Google as query operators.
Google Ignores Word Order
Google ignores the the order of the words in your query. If you search for milk and cereal, you may find results that have these words in the wrong order: cereal and milk.
Added to the fact Google ignores short, common words, Google may even ignore the and and you'll get something outrageous like cereal milk.
Google Ignores Phrases
Added to the above, Google just ignores phrases altogether by default. For example, if you search for "milk and cereal" the words "milk" and "cereal" won't necessarily appear close to each other, in the same phrase or sentence, they may appear ANYWHERE on the page.
This problem gets bigger the more words that you have in your query. For example, if you search for:
the queen of the UK comments about cereal milkEven if an article about this existed, Google most likely would instead show you an article about "the queen of the UK" that has an unrelated story about "milk and cereal" in a sidebar, and this article has a section titled "Comments" at the bottom for user comments, and perhaps even a link with the word "about" that goes to a page explaining what the whole wesite is about.
So Google may find all the words you typed in the page, but they will be spread all around the page and have almost no relationship with each other.
Google Ignores Everything You Type
Google may ignore words that are too uncommon that it can't find in any good results for, preferring to show results that look better even if they don't contain all the terms you searched for. In other words, Google assumes you are so bad at searching at Google, that you just typed everything wrong when it can't find anything.
Google may use synonyms of words you typed instead of exactly what you typed. For example, searching for amazing movies may include results that say incredible films instead.
If you type a word Google doesn't think is real or is a misspelling, Google will assume you typed something wrong, and search for what it assumes to be the right word instead first. For example, if you type hipopoptamus, Google will show you the following message: "Showing results for hippopotamus," and a link to "Search instead for hipopoptamus" that you have to click to actually search for what you searched for.
Google Ignores Symbols and Punctuation
Google ignores symbols and punctuation like +, -, *, _, ', ", (, ) , [, ], {, } , #, @, $, &, /, |, \, ., ,, ;, :, ~.
These are ignored even when double quotes are used.
Some of these symbols have special functions in Google, and when they do they aren't ignored. For example, - excludes a term from the search results when it appears right before the term, e.g.: panda -red won't show results for red pandas. However, when they appear in other positions, they are ignored, e.g.: panda - red (with a space between - and red), will just search for red pandas and ignore the minus symbol in the middle.
Exceptionally, if the query is JUST the symbol and nothing more, then Google will search for the symbol itself, e.g.: if you type just - on Google, Google will show you results about the minus symbol.
This behavior is generally not a problem when searching for normal things, but it does get in the way when you're dealing with computer code. This can happen if you're a programmer, and it can also happen if you're just an user of a software like Instagram, Twitter, or Discord that lets you type text code somewhere for a computer program to interpret.
In these cases, the text code will likely use symbols and punctuation to perform special functions, because those symbols are unlikely to get in the way when you're typing normal phrases. Consequently, it can be difficult to find on Google an explanation for what the symbols do.
For example, there is no way to search on Google for "what @ means in Instagram" or "what # means in Twitter" or "what * means in Markdown" or "what => means in Javascript" because Google will simply ignore the characters @, #, *, =, and >. If you search for /r/ or /u/ that are used on Reddit, Google will just search for the r and u letters and ignore the slashes.
In these cases, you need to type "what an asterisk means in Markdown" and hope that the webpage that explains it actually includes the word "asterisk" in it or that Google is smart enough to search for actual asterisks when you type the word "asterisk."
It's worth noting that while Google can't see the punctuation in a query, Google can still see what users do with the search results for a query. For example, if you type "what @ means in Instagram," the first result may actually be an answer for what @ means in Instagram. But how is this possible, if Google ignores the @? Google will read the query as if it had no @, in other words, what Google sees is "what means in Instagram." This phrase makes no sense, right? Google may even include results for the hashtag #means in Instagram because it has no idea what you're searching for. However, the human beings who search for this query can see the @ just fine, and they know what results they want. They will not click on irrelevant results such as the hashtag one. They want an explanation for the @ symbol. So the most clicked result will be the explanation for the what @ means. You can even test this yourself. If you search on Google for what means in Instagram without the @, you will get the exact same results as if you typed the @, including an explanation for @ as the first result.
Google makes an exception for the popular programming languages named C++ and C#. It won't ignore the symbols when they're attached to their names. On the other hand, the websites for such languages assume search engines won't work well with names like these, so the webpages typically contain terms like cpp and csharp that are easier to index.
Fun fact: Hoogle (https://hoogle.haskell.org/) is a search engine created just to search for help with Haskell code, because it uses many symbols that Google will just ignore.
Google Ignores Accented Letters
Google ignores accents on letters, so resume and résumé are the same thing for Google.
These are ignored even when double quotes are used.
Google also ignores accents if they are NOT on the letters, for example, if you type just ´, Google will just ignore it completely, except if it's the only thing in the query, then Google will show you pages about the acute accent. In other words, Google will treat accent characters just the way it treats symbols and punctuation.
For example, searching for "what does ` do in discord" is the same thing as searching for "what does do in discord."
However, strangely, searching for three "backticks," what does ``` do in discord, gives different results. I'm still pretty sure Google can't actually see the grave accents, so it probably has some other way of differentiating between the two queries.
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