To force Google to search for a particular term, put a + sign operator in front of the word in the query. Note that you should not put a space between the + and the word. So, to search for the satirical newspaper The Onion, use [ +The Onion ], not [ + The Onion ].

The + operator is typically used in front of stop words that Google would otherwise ignore or when you want Google to return only those pages that match your search terms exactly. However, the + operator can be used on any term.

Want to learn about Star Wars Episode One? “I” is a stop word and is not included in a search unless you precede it with a + sign.

• USE [ Star Wars +I ]
• NOT [ Star Wars I ]

Google excludes common words in English and in other languages, such as “la” (which means “the” in Spanish) and “de” (which means “of” in French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese). So if Google ignores a term critical to your search, e.g., LA (common abbreviation for Los Angeles), put a + sign in front of it.

• USE [ jobs in central +LA California ]
• NOT [  jobs in central LA California ]

The query [ jobs in central LA California ] finds jobs in central California, since the term “LA” is ignored because it’s a stop word. Central California is at least a hundred miles (160 km) from central Los Angeles.

Disable automatic stemming, i.e., searching for pages that match variants of your search term(s), by preceding each term that you want to be matched exactly with the + operator. For example, if you want to see only pages mentioning one favorite book rather than lists of favorite books, precede the word “book” by a + sign.

• [ favorite +book ]

Google will search for “favourite” and “favorite” too. To prevent this, precede the word “favorite” by a + sign.

• [ +favorite +book ]

What if you’re looking for a string that contains a “+” sign? Though the character has special meaning, Google gives special attention to very common terms that include it, e.g., C++ (the name of a widely used computer language).

• [ C++ ]

tags (keywords): fine tune, narrowing search, queries, special characters, spelling, stop words