Getting Started With Search
To search for a document, type a few descriptive words in the search box, and press the Enter key or click the search button. Google produces a results page with a list of documents and web pages that are related to your search terms, with the most relevant search results appearing at the top of the page. By default, Google returns only pages that include all of your search terms. So to broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms. You do not need to include "and" between the terms. For example, to search for engineering product specification documents, type the following:
Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, Google analyzes not only the candidate page, but also the pages that link to it, too. Google also prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other. Every search result lists one or more snippets, or excerpts from the document, to display the search terms in context. In the snippet, your search terms are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly determine if that result is from a page or document you want to visit.
Note: Encrypted, viewable PDF documents are converted to HTML for indexing, but the HTML is not displayed.
Spelling
For U.S. English searches, a single spelling suggestion is returned with the results for queries where the spell checker has detected a possible spelling mistake. The spell checker feature is context sensitive.
Capitalization
Google searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are handled as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington," "George Washington," and "George washington" return the same results.
Word Variations (Stemming)
Google searches not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. For example, if you search for "info" or "info*," Google will also search for "information," "informing," "informant," and other related variations. Variants of your search will be highlighted in the snippet of text that accompanies each result.
Common Words
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 indicates that a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page.If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a plus ("+") sign in front of it. Include a space before the "+" sign, but not after it. For example, to search for documents about Star Wars I, type the following:
Alternatively, you can enclose a series of words with quotation marks and do a phrase search.
Date Sort
By default, search results are sorted by relevance, with the most relevant result appearing at the top of the page. If you want to sort the documents by date instead, click the Sort by Date link. The most recent document appears at the top of the page and the date of each file is returned in the results. Results that do not contain dates are displayed at the end and are sorted by relevance.