Google search question

coffeehound

Does anyone know the details of how google searches, please.  I've tried er, googling this question and not found a straight answer.

If you have a search term containing a colon, such as 
abcd:ef 
will google return hits containing the colon before listing hits contining just abcdef without the colon?  Thanks for any insights.

jon81uk

If you want to search for an exact phrase use quotes round "exact phrase"

Neil_Jones

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

coffeehound

Thanks gents.  I'm thinking of having a product name that contains a colon instead of an i and woondering how well / badly it would turn up under google's algorithms -- from the point of view of a punter searching for it

Neil_Jones

coffeehound said:

Thanks gents.  I'm thinking of having a product name that contains a colon instead of an i and woondering how well / badly it would turn up under google's algorithms -- from the point of view of a punter searching for it

The Google search engine is far more intelligent than you seem to be giving it credit for.  Remember it doubles up as a calculator, weather machine, translator, dictionary and stopwatch (and lots of other things) all from the one bar, without you having to tell it that you want to add 2+2 or that you want to translate "Bonjour" from French to English or whatever.

If you Google for RI:SE, which was the name of Channel 4's Breakfast programme in 2002, that comes back third in the list, behind two results for the research institute of Sweden.

coffeehound

Neil_Jones said:

If you Google for RI:SE, which was the name of Channel 4's Breakfast programme in 2002, that comes back third in the list, behind two results for the research institute of Sweden.

That's the example I was hoping for.  So if replacing a letter with a punctuation mark, that should potentially make it even more specific in searches.  Many thanks.