Question

Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) affect your search results. If you do a search in Quick SearchLinks to an external site. for books using the search phrase graffiti AND Los Angeles, you'll retrieve about 10 records for books. If you re-do that search as graffiti OR Los Angeles, you will broaden your search results (retrieve more records). Why is this so?

Answer 1

Answer

Search engines use operators to more heavily define your search

Explanation:

In this instance, when using the boolean AND, the engine is searching for a book that talks about BOTH graffiti and Los Angeles or Graffiti in Los Angles. When you use OR you get more results because it is searching for books that are either about graffiti OR Los Angles. When using OR the criteria is not as strict and therefore returns more results.