By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – December 07, 2010 at 02:00PM
Google searches are pretty smart and tend to be relevant to your search terms, but if you want to get really specific you can specify the proximity of your search terms with the undocumented AROUND operator.
While the AND operator, used to ensure the inclusion of two search terms (e.g. “Bert AND Ernie”), is great when you just need those search terms to appear anywhere in the results. Often times, however, you might search for Bert and Ernie but come across several articles that focus on Bert and Ernie’s name just shows up in a contextual link somewhere else on the page. This situation is a job for the AROUND operator, which lets you specify the proximity in which your search terms appear in the results.
For example, if you were searching for “Bert AND Ernie” before, you could now use “Bert AROUND(1) Ernie” instead. This will tell Google that you’re looking for Bert and Ernie to appear in close proximity to each other. If you want to extend the range a bit, increase the number (e.g. AROUND(2), AROUND(3), etc.).