As with a search for “horse,” Google may assume that you want to find a place to go horse riding near you and show a map of nearby stables.
Stemming Words
Google automatically searches for variations of the words you use, so when you search for horse riding, you’re also searching for "ride" and “horses.” Similarly, if you had results you wanted to exclude, you could use a minus sign, so horse -breeding would yield results of horse without the word breeding on the page. Make sure you put a space before the minus sign and no space between the minus sign and the word or phrase you wish to exclude Another way to quickly drill down to the results you need in a page with a lot of information is to just use your browser’s Control-F (or on a Mac Command-F) function to find a word on the page. Many people forget this is an option and end up wasting time needlessly skimming through a pile of words on a long page. In our guest ranch example, rather than searching on Google’s main search engine, it might be more helpful to search for a dude ranch in Missouri while looking at a map. To do this, click on the Maps link at the top of the screen to go to Google Maps. However, you may notice that this step isn’t always necessary. There are maps results already embedded within the search results. If you’re interested in the Bucks and Spurs guest ranch, you can click on the directions link listed underneath the address in the search results. You can also click on the map on the side of the screen. Keep in mind that not every location is going to have a website, so sometimes it’s still helpful to search in Google Maps instead of sticking to the main Google search engine.
