Photo Search Tips

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Here are some tips:

Misspelling

Accidentally misspelling a word or term is the most common reason for getting incorrect or even no results. Make sure the keywords you are entering are really what you are looking for. By-the-way, keywords are spelled in U.S. English, so try “humor” rather than “humour.”

Boolean operators

Avoid entering words such as “the,” “and,” and “or,” or the “+” symbol. Instead, enter only the keywords you are looking for. For example, entering “California sunrise” will return a bunch of results, while “California and sunrise” will probably return nothing. If you want more control over the search, try our advanced search engine.

Too specific

The search engine looks for matching keywords rather than descriptions, so try to use general keywords that describe what you are looking for rather than descriptive sentences. For example, if you were looking for spiders that are found in California, you might enter “California spiders” rather than “spiders that are found in California.”

Not specific enough

The search engine looks for character strings, and will return all images associated with a particular string. For example, entering “CA” to look for images of California will not only return images of California, but also North Carolina, Cacti, and landscapes. Entering the entire word will narrow the results.