How to exclude words from a Google search
Put a minus sign in front of the word you want to leave out. Learn the one rule people miss, how to exclude phrases and sites, and other operators.
How to exclude a word from a Google search: put a minus sign directly in front of the word you want to leave out. That is the whole trick to exclude words from Google search results, and it saves a surprising amount of scrolling.
Google's own example is a search about jaguar speed that should ignore the car:
jaguar speed -car
The one rule people miss
No space between the minus sign and the word. Google's help page makes the same point about operators in general: do not put spaces between the operator and your search term. It gives the example that site:nytimes.com works and site: nytimes.com does not. The same goes for the minus sign: -car works, - car does not.
How to exclude several words
Add a minus sign in front of each word you want gone:
marketing agency -jobs -salary -internship
This is one of the most useful habits for business research. If you are trying to see what customers find when they search for your service, removing job listings and salary pages clears out a lot of noise.
How to exclude a whole phrase
Combine the minus sign with quotation marks:
seo tips -"for beginners"
Quotation marks on their own search for an exact word or phrase, which is another operator Google lists on the same page.
How to exclude a whole website
Pair the minus sign with the site: operator:
best crm for small business -site:reddit.com
That is handy when one site dominates the results and you want to see who else ranks.
Other operators Google documents
Google's help page on refining searches lists a short set of popular operators:
| Operator | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| "quotes" | Exact word or phrase | "tallest building" |
| site: | Results from one site | site:youtube.com cat videos |
| Minus sign | Leaves a word out | jaguar speed -car |
| before: | Updated before a date | astronomy discovery before:2025/11/01 |
| after: | Updated after a date | astronomy discoveries after:2026/03/10 |
| filetype: | One type of file | photoelectric effect paper filetype:pdf |
Google also notes you can combine before: and after: to search within a date range.
If you would rather skip the symbols
Search for anything, click Tools under the search box, then Advanced Search, and fill in the fields. On mobile, the same option sits under Search Tools. The form does the same job as the operators, with labeled boxes for words to include and exclude.
How marketers use exclusions
- Remove keywords from Google search results you do not care about, like "free," "jobs" or "DIY," to see the commercial results your buyers see.
- Check your own visibility without your site: search a topic with
-site:yourdomain.comto see who else ranks. - Study a competitor's coverage:
site:competitor.com pricingshows their pages on a topic.
We cover more research uses, and the limits of these tools, in our guide to Google search operators for SEO.
One caution
Operators narrow what you see. They do not change how Google ranks pages for everyone else. Treat what you find as a quick look, and use Search Console for data about your own site.
Quick answers about excluding words
Why did my minus sign not work? The most common reason is a space between the minus sign and the word. Google's rule is no spaces between an operator and the term.
Can I exclude several words at once? Yes. Put a minus sign in front of each one.
Does excluding words change my rankings? No. Operators only change what you see in your own search.
Is there a version without symbols? Yes: Tools, then Advanced Search, which has a field for words you do not want.
Sources
Checked October 3, 2026. Platforms change their guidance. The linked pages are the final word.
