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So I've sometimes searched Google for certain pages and Google will actually return pages that don't have my searched terms. For example, if I search for analytic proof dihedral homomorphism (I don't currently actually want to search for this, it's just an example.) it will return a few things that are all appropriately relevant to every individual term. However, it also returns the following page:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/752203/surjective-homomorphism-dihedral-group

which doesn't contain any word like "analytic".

However, often when I search for this kind of thing I want to make sure that every word I searched for occurs at least once in the result. Is there a way to force Google not to "take liberties" like this? That is to say, can I force Google to return only pages that contain every word that I searched for?

[Edit: By the way, this same basic question was posed before, at this page.

why google search return results that does not contain the string I searched for?

However, nobody successfully indicated how to get the desired results.]

Community
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Addem
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    What does this have to do with programming? – mittmemo Mar 17 '15 at 20:45
  • @mittmemo Nothing, is there a more appropriate community for this question? I saw "google-search" as a possible tag in this community and inferred that this community handles questions about Google searches. – Addem Mar 17 '15 at 20:46
  • I'm not very familiar with all the other stack exchange communities, but I know this one is geared exclusively towards programming. The other question similar to this posted on stackoverflow was closed due to being off-topic, I suspect this question will be too. "Questions about general computing hardware and software are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used primarily for programming. You may be able to get help on Super User." – mittmemo Mar 17 '15 at 20:48
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    @mittmemo using google is a must and everyday task for every coder – arod Mar 28 '17 at 18:10

2 Answers2

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Super Users has the answer at the following page:

https://superuser.com/questions/19335/force-google-search-to-require-terms-by-default

The current work around is to put the word you want to force in quotes:

foo bar "baz"

Google won't return pages without baz.

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Addem
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    This is unfortunately no longer accurate IME. – Gordon Feb 07 '20 at 00:37
  • @Gordon This was never accurate, even for me. I got my answer edited by the community, to say something that I don't agree. My original post stated that there is no fix for this problem, but that using quotes is the nearest approximation of a solution. – Addem Feb 04 '21 at 16:20
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This can happen when it is not the actual search term in your query found but rather, a synonym of it. This is why using quotes around your search "term" will return pages containing that term correctly.

Google flags page results which do not contain all of the terms listed by your query and the actual missing terms themselves, marking the search result underneath the entry with

Missing: terms missing

Page results that contain synonyms substituted in by Google in place of exact query terms, unfortunately, do not trigger the Missing Term flag and display. This is not overly helpful in my experience.

If the specific search term you're after isn't listed as a Missing: term here, then it's a good bet that your term of interest has been substituted for a synonym.

As noted elsewhere, you can use quotes around your "term" to prevent substitution (or rather, force exact matching); bear in mind though that quotes are absolute and exact. Eg. If you search for "plurals" you won't find "plural" on its own.

For substitution that still falls within the terms of your desired search and to get the results you want (eg. plural, plurals, but NOT many or multiple), you may need to consider using more advanced queries such as wildcards(*) etc. to help create a suitable filter.

You can find a list of more advanced queries here

Dannii Darkness
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