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Have a problem with Google News Search, maybe I'm doing something wrong way.

When I'm trying to find news either on

Russia LNG export

or on

Uralkali

on Google News Search with the setting "past 24 hours" ON, I get proper results. But when I try to combine them using OR:

Uralkali OR Russia LNG export 
Russia LNG export OR Uralkali

I get only the news on Russia's recent changes to LNG export rules in both cases. I'm curious what is the reason. I thought the queries should bring up all available news where either this OR that is mentioned.

To clarify: in my example I'm trying to find news articles that either have the words "russia, lng, export" in any combination OR have the word Uralkali.

Looking for (Russia LNG export) OR Uralkali doesn't seem to help.

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3 Answers 3

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1

The OR functionality states that it is to be used for the following:

The Boolean operator OR specifies alternatives to use as synonyms in search.

Source

So in this case wouldn't you want to search:

LNG export Russia OR Uralkali

That is what I think you want? Possibly even putting Uralkali in quotation marks.

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3
  • Thanks for the reply, Fogest! In my example I need news articles that either have the words "russia, lng, export" in any combination OR have the word Uralkali. Does the search "LNG export Russia OR Uralkali" state obligatory presence of "LNG, export" in all returned articles? Does OR affect only the words nearest to it? If so, I'm curious how to fine-tune it to my needs.
    – CopperKettle
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 10:09
  • 1
    @CopperKettle I agree it is pretty confusing when it comes to this search operator. If it helps put the search terms in brackets. So search for LNG export (Russia OR Uralkali). This should help you understand kind of how the operator is working. I tried your search without the Russia part and it seems the search itself does not even have many relevant results for Uralkali, so it is hard to determine if this search is even working correctly.
    – ComputerLocus
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 13:43
  • I'm trying to combine several topics in one search. I don't need LNG, export in every search result. So I guessed the solution is to search for (Russia LNG export) OR Uralkali. But this gave only one instance of Uralkali in a "last 7 days" search, that's strange. "(LNG export) OR Uralkali" for "last 24 hrs" again brings up only LNG export-related articles, leaving Uralkali aside. D'oh. Say, at the Yandex search engine I combine 9 search topics using "|", with up to 3 words in each topic; works like a charm.
    – CopperKettle
    Commented Dec 4, 2013 at 14:55
1

I did a quick search (news.google.com) using both terms separately then played around with the boolean terms and this seems to merge the two results:

(Russia AND LNG OR export) OR Uralkali
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-1

Just like as mathematics. use bracket's to distinguish between two search items. (search_expression1) AND (search_expression2) OR (search_expression3)

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