Boolean Operators Explained: AND, OR, NOT, Quotes & Parentheses
Every boolean search string, however long, is built from five pieces of syntax. Learn these five and you can read — and write — almost any search string you'll encounter on LinkedIn, Google or a CV database.
- AND
- Both terms must appear
- OR
- Either term may appear
- NOT
- Excludes a term
- " "
- Exact phrase match
- ( )
- Groups terms so operators apply in order
AND: narrowing a search to required terms
AND tells a search engine that every term joined by it must be present in the result. Each AND you add makes a search string more specific and, generally, returns fewer results. Recruiters typically use AND to combine unrelated required criteria — a skill, a location, a seniority level.
This string only returns profiles or pages containing the exact phrase "data analyst", the term SQL, and the word Manchester — all three, not just one or two.
OR: broadening a search across synonyms
OR tells a search engine that only one of the linked terms needs to appear. This is the operator recruiters underuse most — job titles vary enormously between companies, and a search for one exact title alone will miss strong candidates using a different label for the same job.
Always wrap an OR group in parentheses when it sits next to an AND, as shown above — this stops the search engine misreading which terms belong together (more on that below).
NOT: excluding irrelevant results
NOT removes results containing the following term. On Google this is usually written as a minus sign directly before the word instead of the word NOT; on LinkedIn and most CV databases, NOT is typed out in full. It's the operator most likely to accidentally over-filter, since excluding a common word can remove genuinely relevant profiles too.
Use NOT sparingly and specifically — excluding "student" is safer than excluding "graduate", which many qualified, employed candidates also list on their profile.
Quotation marks: forcing an exact phrase
Quotation marks around two or more words force the search engine to treat them as a single, exact phrase rather than as separate keywords that might appear anywhere on the page. This matters enormously for job titles, which are almost always multi-word.
| Without quotes | With quotes |
|---|---|
| project manager | Matches pages containing "project" and "manager" anywhere, even in unrelated sentences. |
| "project manager" | Matches only pages where those two words appear together, in that order. |
Parentheses: controlling the order operators are read in
Parentheses group terms so the search engine evaluates them together before applying the operators outside the brackets — the same role they play in a maths equation. Leaving out parentheses around an OR group is the single most common boolean mistake, because most search engines process AND before OR by default, which silently changes what the string actually matches.
Right: "financial analyst" AND (Excel OR "Power BI")
The "wrong" version above can be read as "(financial analyst AND Excel) OR Power BI" — which would wrongly return any result mentioning Power BI at all, with no requirement to be a financial analyst. Wrapping the OR group in brackets fixes this.
Putting it together: a worked example
A recruiter searching for a mid-level marketing candidate in Leeds, open to either an in-house or agency title, might build:
AND ("B2B" OR "business-to-business")
AND Leeds
NOT intern NOT student
Read left to right: match either job title, and mention B2B experience in either phrasing, and be associated with Leeds, and exclude anything mentioning intern or student roles.
FAQs on boolean operators
What is the difference between AND and OR in boolean search?
AND narrows results because every linked term must appear, while OR broadens results because only one needs to appear. Use AND for different required criteria, and OR for interchangeable synonyms or job titles.
Why do I need quotation marks in a boolean search?
Quotation marks force an exact-phrase match instead of a loose keyword match. Without quotes around "project manager", results can contain "project" and "manager" far apart on the page.
Do I need to capitalise AND, OR and NOT?
Yes, on most platforms. Google, LinkedIn and most CV databases only recognise these as operators in capital letters; lower case is treated as an ordinary search word.
Next: apply this to a real platform
Now that you know the five building blocks, see how they behave in practice on LinkedIn boolean search, or jump straight to CV and X-ray sourcing strings for searching outside LinkedIn entirely. If a string you've built isn't returning what you expect, check Common Search Mistakes first.