Search operators

Special syntax in a search query, such as quotes or site:, that narrows what the search engine returns.

Last updated September 28, 2026.

Definition

What Search operators means

Search operators change how a query is matched. In Google, quotes match an exact phrase, a minus sign excludes a word, site: limits results to one domain, and OR matches either of two terms. They work in the search box and in any API that passes the query through.

Operators are how monitoring and research tools make broad searches precise: "Acme Corp" -jobs finds mentions of a company without its job ads, and site:example.com lists the pages Google has for a domain.

Clair's Google Search and Google News APIs pass q to Google as typed, so operators work in both.

In the data

How it appears in a response

GET /v1/search?engine=google_search&q=albert+einstein&country=us&page=1 · query

{
  "q": "albert einstein",
  "language": "en",
  "country": "us",
  "page": 1
}

The query block Clair echoes; q is sent to Google unchanged. From a recorded Google Search API response.

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Glossary