Using + and –

Let’s say you’re looking for somebody named Tom Jonese. You are looking for Tom Jonese the cockroach enthusiast, so you search Google for Tom Jonese

And Google’s like, Did you mean…Tom Jones? And lo and behold all your results are all about Tom Jones the singer, and a bunch of other Tom Joneses, and you’re like,
“Noooo, Google! That’s not what I meant!” What do you do?
There are quite a few things you can do to try and banish Tom Jones the singer.

Use quotes, as in “Tom Jonese”

Quotes mean, “I want this phrase, and EXACTLY this phrase!” All your results should show up with the phrase Tom Jonese.

Use the plus sign, as in Tom +Jonese

The plus sign directly before a word means, “Yes I want this word EXACTLY as spelled!”
The plus sign is also especially useful if you’re looking for a username. Say you are looking for more posts by a cockroach enthusiast with username RoachFever. And so you put in RoachFever and Google doesn’t like that, so it separates Roach and Fever and you get a bunch of results about the album “Fever Dreams” by artist Steve Roach. To get rid of Fever Dreams by Steve Roach, search for +RoachFever instead.

If you’re still not getting results with Tom +Jonese, you can add more information. Search for Tom +Jonese cockroach and hope nobody is calling an unrelated Tom Jonese a dirty little cockroach. Pile on more information as needed.

Let’s say you’re searching for Tom +Jonese cockroach now and you’re getting angry results from people who HATE Tom Jonese the singer and think he’s a vile human cockroach. They hate him SO MUCH they don’t know how to spell Tom Jones, they’re spelling Jones as Jonese, and they’re getting into your results. You can also try getting rid of some of these bad results by using -.

Tom +Jonese cockroach –singer

-Singer means get rid of results with the word singer, and therefore cut out some of the “Tom Jones the singer is a human cockroach” results. However, you had better hope that Tom Jonese the cockroach enthusiast does not have another hobby: singing.
Tom Jonese could have his own homepage telling you all you need to know about his cockroach enthusiasm, but if it says something like,

“HI my name is TOM JONESE and I loooooove cockroaches!!!” and then on the same page it says “I also like to sing, here are some links to songs about cockroaches!” then you have just eliminated one of your most useful results.