Advanced search options at Picasa Web Albums

The help page for searching at Picasa Web Albums is pretty sparse - merely telling you that you can search "My Photos", "My Favorites", or "Community photos", and adding that electing to include your images in Picasa Web Albums search will not include them in Google Image Search results.

That page does not tell you what syntax you can use in the search box itself, though you do get a little guidance showing up if your search does not give any results:

In order to find more items, consider the following tips:

• Choosing the right search terms is the key to finding the information you need. Start with the obvious - if you're looking for items related to Hawaii try typing "Hawaii".
• It's often advisable to use multiple search terms. For example, if you're looking for items of a Hawaiian vacation, type "vacation Hawaii".
• Don't worry about capitalization. Google searches are not case sensitive.
• Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms. For example, you could type "the long winding road".

However some of the operators specified on the Advanced Search page for the normal Google search also apply to searching in Picasa Web Albums.

Specifically the following all work:

• specifying multiple words means the results must include all the given words
• specifying a phrase in quotation marks searches for that exact phrase
• separating words with OR (in capitals) or the vertical bar | finds results with either of the separated values
• using a minus sign before a word excludes results that match that word

Searching looks for what you type in the image tags, descriptions, album titles and other data, but there does not appear to be a way to limit searches so that they only check specific types of this data.