The Syntax of Searching

Asking the question is easy. But the results do not always provide the most relevant information. Sometimes the use of special syntax is required in order to refine the results.

In this tutorial I'll be covering the syntax of DuckDuckGo and StartPage, as these are my choice of engine because of their privacy policies. Feel free to do a search to learn the syntax of your chosen search engine.

DuckDuckGo's basic syntax

Exact phrase: "an exact phrase"
Less of this in results: -term
More of this in results: +term
Search for filetype: filetype:pdf (replace pdf with the type)
Search specific website: term -site:example.com (this would search the website example.com for the word 'term')

StartPage's basic syntax

Exact phrase: "exact phrase"
Omit term from results: -term
Search for filetype: filetype:pdf (just replace pdf with the desired type)
Search specific website: host:example.com +term

StartPage also allows the use of boolean operators for creating complex queries. For that I recommend checking out their documentation, linked below.

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax/

https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/989/0/which-search-operators-are-supported-by-startpage