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How to search the internet for terms with special characters

I have been trying to do a literal search in Google for text exactly like:

{example}

I have tried all sorts of ways like adding '+' prefix, including it in quotes, using allintext etc. without success? Anyone knows how to do this?

Thanks.

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migrated from superuser.com Sep 20 '12 at 12:28

marked as duplicate by Al Everett, phwd♦ Sep 20 '12 at 13:06

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

It's not possible. Special characters can not be used to search on in Google. I find this to be the case with other search engines as well (as expected), like Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo.

The documentation for Google Search states:

Generally, most punctuation and special characters are ignored in Google Search.

A list of special characters that are supported can be found on the same page I linked above.

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Oops, I was hoping for not this, Isn't there any workaround/hacks? – Chibueze Opata Sep 20 '12 at 11:56
It would surprise me, as Google most likely needs to use those special characters 'behind the scenes' in the matching algorithm. – pleinolijf Sep 20 '12 at 11:57
The quote you show talks about Gmail though, not Google Search in specific...? – Chibueze Opata Sep 20 '12 at 12:26
Good point, although the search function will be similar. I'll update my answer. – pleinolijf Sep 20 '12 at 12:29
up vote 1 down vote

This search engine seems to solve the kind of problem you're having: http://symbolhound.com/

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Great, but it seems the search coverage is quite low... – Chibueze Opata Sep 20 '12 at 12:27

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