Ok so my Google-fu is strong in English with like quote search, using the plus and the minus and all that good stuff but I have no clue how to do proper searches in Japanese.

Here is an example search in English:
Rioreusu +GILLGILL

In Japanese if I type a plus when in kana mode It's a crazy looking plus and I'm not sure whether or not to put the space:
リオレウス　＋ＧＩＬＬＧＩＬＬ　

Well when I typed the plus here it looks ok but if I type it in google it looks strange. When I type the above search in Japanese I get no results. However, if I remove the plus and just put a space between リオレウス and ＧＩＬＬＧＩＬＬ then I get results.

Does anyone know of some kind of guide that will show me how to do Google search in Japanese? I still have not figured out how do a search with quotes like I do in English...

Thanks

A quick test suggests that Google ignores differences between half-width and full-width ASCII (ie ＧＩＬＬＧＩＬＬ vs GILLGILL) in the strings you are searching with. However it does not accept full-width versions of the "special characters" like '+' that you can use to adjust your search. So drop back to plain English input for those. Quotes similarly work as with English google, but you must use the right characters, not whatever happens to come out when you hit " in kanji-input mode...

Got it, thanks for your help! As a Japanese person it must suck to have to switch the input mode every time just to type +,-, and "

There are shortcuts that makes it a little easier, I think this has been discussed elsewhere on the forum. Right off the top of my head:

F7 converts hiragana to katakana (pressing it multiple times (F8 too) will convert the characters one at a time back to hiragana, like for slang verbs like ハモる)
ぶらいあｎ→ブライアン
はもる→ハモル→ハモる
F8 makes it half width katakana
ぶらいあｎ→ﾌﾞﾗｲｱﾝ
F9　converts to full width english but i'm not quite sure about this one
F10 converts to halfwidth/direct input, this is especially handy for stuff like google.
＋ぎｌｌぎｌｌ→+gillgill
repeatedly pressing F10 cycles the case from UPPER to lower to Captialized

Heres what the MS Help file says, and theres lots more.
全角カタカナ変換
F7 キー
Ctrl + I キー

半角変換
F8 キー
Ctrl + O キー

全角英数変換
F9 キー
Ctrl + P キー

半角英数変換
F10 キー
Ctrl + T キー

Ah, I've always wondered the same thing but never bothered to investigate.
Now I'll know how to do better searches. If only my japanese was good enough to properly evaluate the search results without blindly checking every site :p