Internet Research with Google Advanced Search

Alternative terms

Suppose that the search topic was:
The effect of climate change on agriculture in Australia

It may be useful to widen the search to also retrieve pages that include the word "farming". Enter the alternative terms in Find results with any of the words:

This search will find pages containing both of the terms "australia" and "climate change" and also either of the words "farming" or "agriculture". (Pages which include all four terms will also be retrieved).

Try this for yourself: What results do you obtain with separate searches using "farming" and "agriculture". How does this compare with including them as alternative terms (as in the search above)? Google Advanced Search

How did you go? In January 2002 the following results were obtained:

Inclusion of alternate words in a search increases the number of results compared with searching on just one or other of them. Individual searches including just farming gave 12,700 pages; just agriculture gave 53,400. Entering both agriculture and farming in the "any of the words" box retrieved approximately 58,000 results.