Hello Linda~
You're right; a few little "tricks" go a long way when you're
searching the vast arena of information available on the Internet.
Here are some of the easiest to use and most effective tips:
1. If you're looking for a specific phrase, place it inside quotation
marks. Typing "ivory vs. bone" into a search engine will produce far
more specific results than simply typing in:
ivory, bone
Remember, however, that you'll only bring up websites with that
*specific* term.
2. If you're searching for information on, say, the moon landings, but
you specifically want to eliminate information on conspiracy theories,
you might type in:
moon landing -conspiracy
This will ensure that websites mentioning such theories don't show up
in your search. (Better yet, type in:
moon landing* -conspirac*
See #3 for more information on asterisks.)
3. Use asterisks This is especially helpful if you have a word in your
search that could be either singular or plural. You'll also find it
useful for words that might be possessive or not. An example of how
this should look when you type it into your search engine:
Noah* ark
4. If you want to find pages that will show ALL the words in your
search, not just some of them, use a plus sign:
+President +Bush +Gore
5. Be specific. Don't be afraid to get down to the nitty gritty. If
you want to find information on how electronic organs work, don't be
afraid to type in:
"how electronic organs work"
6. You can control what sites are included or excluded from a search.
For example, let's say you want to see everything the Focus On The
Family website had to say about dating. You'd type this into Google:
dat*.site:family.org
(I used "dat*" because it would pull up more information than
restricting it to "dating.") Other search engines use different codes
for doing this; to find out about other engines, visit this handy
reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/ataglance.html )
7. Use URL searches. Here's an explanation:
"This is very similar to performing a site search...Google's advanced
search page uses the allinurl command for finding URLs that contain
certain words...However, it is the undocumented "inurl" command that
you should use, if you want to find both web pages with words in the
URL and within the pages themselves. For example, let's say you want
to find PDF files about mars exploration. Entering "mars exploration"
isn't enough, because that could bring back both HTML and PDF pages.
To solve this, you can use the inurl command to specify that URLs must
have the word "pdf" in them, which will increase the chances of
getting PDF files. Here's both commands, combined: mars exploration
inurl:pdf If you used the "allinurl" command rather than the "inurl"
command, this search wouldn't work. By the way, the "allinurl" command
takes its name because when using it, you are requiring that ALL the
words appear IN the URL. In contrast, the inurl command means that ANY
of the words you specify should appear. Google also has a command that
lets you narrow your search to find documents in particular formats,
such works better than forcing the URL command into this role. The
command is filetype:, and you follow it with the extension you want to
search for. For instance: california power crisis filetype:pdf brings
back PDF files that contain the words "california power crisis." In
contrast: california power crisis filetype:asp brings back Microsoft
Active Server Pages (ASP) files, while california power crisis
filetype:html brings back ordinary HTML files that end in .html, that
contain the words. It will not bring back HTML files the end in .htm,
however." ("Power Searching For Anyone," by Danny Sullivan, Editor,
Search Engine Watch,
http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/powersearch.html )
8. One of my favorite features on Google are cached websites. When you
do a search and click on a resulting link, but find the page is no
longer there, be sure to see if Google has provided a cached link on
the results page. If it has, you can click on it and view the old
website.
9. After performing a search, click on the "Search within results"
link that appears at the bottom of the results page in Google, next to
the search box.
10. Find Similar Pages. This is another of those small links found on
a Google results pages that often goes unnoticed. But it can be handy
when you have one or two results that hit the mark, and want to find
more.
For more good searching tips, visit:
http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/powersearch.html
Hope this helps!
kriswrite
Keywords Used:
tips searching internet
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