Google is smart enough to show you exactly what you are looking for. But sometimes it gets frustrating when you do not want it to show specific search results. Here come the search operators.
These are special commands that you use during your search on Google and other search engines. It helps in multiple ways to refine your searches. This is the quickest way to extract the relevant search results.
If you are interested in knowing more about Advanced Search Operators, you can read my detailed article here.
Anyway, let's get back to our previous topic which is about excluding words from Google search results.
Why do I need to exclude certain words from my search?
You might be thinking why there is a need to exclude certain words from your search query.
Well, you must know that while searching for something on Google, you may find plenty of irrelevant search results that can be quite frustrating for you.
If you use a search operator which in this case is (-), you will be able to exclude the irrelevant or unwanted search results.
Let's suppose you are searching for a new laptop, your query is “buy new laptop” and you do not want Google to show you HP laptops.
Here in this case you will use a dash, hyphen or say, a minus sign to exclude this term from the search results.
Here is how the search will look like now:
That is why we need to exclude certain terms from our queries to get exactly what we are looking for.
How to exclude words from Google search in different ways
Let's have a look at how to remove certain words or phrases from Google to refine our search results:
Use - to exclude a certain word
This is the simplest way to exclude a specific term from your search query. Let’s say you are searching for “SEO services”. Here is how a typical SERP may appear to you.
Suppose, you do not want “Fiverr” to appear in those results. You will add a - with Fiverr like this “-Fiverr”. Now your SERP will look like this:
Keep in mind, that you can exclude as many terms as you can.
Use - with “” to exclude an entire phrase
Suppose you are looking for a mobile phone that must have high-end features. You do have the budget, so you do not want Google to show you cheap or budget-friendly cell phones.
For that, you will use “” with a specific term like “budget-friendly smartphones” along with - to inform Google that you do not want to see the results or all websites that have mentioned this phrase in particular.
In this case, Google will not show the search results for the exact phrase you have mentioned in quotes.
Use site: for specific websites
This is used when you are searching for a product, service or piece of information, but you do not want certain items, words or information to appear in the search results against those keywords from a particular website.
Just like I have searched for the latest phones, but I want Google to not show me the results from “daraz.pk”.
So now I'll use this:
Check if your content exists on other sites
One of the most useful ways to use the (-) search operator is to identify plagiarised content.
If you doubt that any of your piece of content exists on other websites, you can simply use the - operator along with a specific tagline or a unique phrase or sentence from your website like this.
As you can see, only those search results appear where the reference towards my website exists, and so does the tagline. Otherwise, no other website has copied this exact phrase or my content.
Use of Google Advanced Search
Besides all those methods mentioned above, you can also use the Google Advanced Search option to exclude certain words, phrases or particular sites from search results.
Just follow these steps.
Go to Google and locate the “Settings” option - usually present at the bottom of the page.
Click “Settings” and you will have an option of “Advanced search”. Click here.
Now you will see the Advanced search page. Here you can add the words or phrases you want to search.
Suppose you search for “black”. A typical SERP will show you information about the black colour, movie and its pronunciation or meaning.
Let’s say you do not want to get information about a movie and also, do not want Google to show you the result from Wikipedia. This is how you will fill those fields in “Advanced Search”.
Keep in mind while using the “Advanced Search” option, there is no need to add the minus sign as it reverses the outcome and will show you the results you do not want to see.
Now click the “Advanced Search” at the bottom of the page.
This is probably what you were looking for.
You can see that Google has automatically added a (-) sign with all the words you wanted to exclude.
Some use cases
You must have learned the purpose of excluding words from search queries, however here I have provided a few more examples to make it further clear for you.
Use Case | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
Removing irrelevant products/services | iphone -samsung -android | Exclude results related to different products or services with similar names. |
Filtering out adult content | flowers -porn -adult | Exclude explicit terms to get more family-friendly search results. |
Avoiding spoilers or plot details | game of thrones -spoilers -plot | Exclude terms related to spoilers or plot details for movies, books, or TV shows. |
Refining job searches | software engineer jobs -contractor -freelance -remote | Exclude terms related to undesirable locations, companies, or job types. |
Excluding specific file types | tutorial pdf -doc -ppt | Exclude other file types to find information in a particular format. |
Removing outdated information | windows 11 -windows 7 -windows 8 | Exclude outdated terms or versions to focus on the most recent and relevant results. |
Narrowing down scientific or academic searches | climate change research -"author name" -publication | Exclude specific terms, authors, or publications to refine scholarly searches. |
The bottom line
Excluding specific terms from your queries helps refine your results and shows you what you actually want to see.
It saves time, avoids irrelevant results and helps get valuable information in no time.