8. Nesting (Brackets)

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Search engines may get confused. What does the following search imply, really?

The use of parentheses -- nesting -- will clear things up:

This means that you want a pizza with olives, but are uncertain whether you want pepperoni or ham on that pizza.

On the other hand:

means that you have to choose between a pepperoni pan pizza and a dish based on ham and olives.

Yahoo! support for nesting is as of 2008 weak, to say the least. Google does support it. Live and Exalead have full support for the kind of Boolean searching we are presenting here.

Now you know the basics. Some engines use the expression NOT instead of AND NOT, but if you stick to AND NOT it should work anyway. Write AND NOT in two words. The only exception is Pandia Plus and the Open Directory, actually. Here you have to write ANDNOT in one word. ANDNO, don't ask us why!

Some search engines want you to write the Boolean operators in CAPITAL letters. The rest will ignore the difference between upper and lower case. If you use capital letters you are on the safe side.

This is fun! Take me to the next level!
I want to try this out. Take me to the Powersearch page!
I'm hungry, I want pizza.

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