If we want to be more precise with our Google Trends queries, then we can use boolean search operators.

Boolean operators in Google Trends allow users to refine search results by combining multiple terms with the plus sign (+), excluding specific terms with the minus sign (-), and using quotation marks (“”) to search for exact phrases in a particular order.

List of operators

Plus Sign (+)

The plus sign combines multiple search terms, effectively showing the summed results.

For example,

electric + car

will show combined results for searches including either "electric" (e.g., "electric bicycle", "electric appliances", "electric car") OR "car" (e.g., "car rental", "sports car", "electric car").

Note that this is different from searching both terms, together ("electric car"), which would show all searches that contain both "electric" and "car" in any order, including “electric car”, “electric car near me”, “car that is electric”, etc.

Minus Sign (-)

The minus sign will exclude a specific term from our search results.

For example,

electric car -tesla

will show results for "electric car" but excludes any queries containing the term "Tesla." Note that the excluded term should be immediately preceded by the minus sign, without a space.

Also, you can exclude multiple keywords in a search, but you cannot exclude phrases as a single unit. For example, to exclude ‘tesla coil’ from search results, we would use "-tesla -coil", not "-tesla coil."

The minus operator is particularly useful if we want to filter out a dominant brand or subtopic.

Quotation Marks (“”)

Lastly, quotation marks will limit results to searches with a particular ordering.

For example,

"electric car"

will show results that contain those two words, in that order. This is different from searches without the quotation marks, which would include results for both "electric car" and "car electric."

However, results for queries with quotation marks will still include long-tails, or searches wherein “electric car” is part of a longer search, such as “electric car chargers.”

Combine boolean operators

Now that we're familiar with the basic operators, we can combine multiple operators in a single query to fine-tune the results even further.

For example,

"electric car" + charging -tesla

will show results for the exact phrase "electric car", including searches with "charging", but excluding results with "tesla." For instance, "electric car station for charging" would be included, but "tesla electric car charging" would not.

Additional notes

  • For optimal results, begin with a broad search and then use the different search operators to refine your results.

  • Some highly-specific combinations of operators may return limited data due to low search volume.

  • Google Trends doesn’t support complex boolean logic, such as using parentheses to group search terms.

  • Boolean operators are only supported for Search Terms, not Topics; learn more about the difference between them.