I just read a New York Times editorial headlined "When Irish Eyes Stop
Smiling" that deals with an Irish journalist named Carole Coleman. 
Wanting to know more about her work, when I entered in google "carole
+colemam" I dredged up that same editorial and a recent relevant
newspiece which was also followed by a lot of other Caroles as well as
other seemingly irrelevant material.  My question is how do I instruct the
search facility to give me NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT I AM ASKING FOR?
Where is there a resource that will help make my searching more
effective by helping me screen out irrelevant material? How can I say
"Find 'carole coleman'but serve me no material that is not relevant
to a 'carole coleman'?"

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 04 Jul 2004 15:08 PDT

I understand your problem but I'm not certain what you asking for
specifically. You said "How can I say find 'carole coleman' but serve
me no material that is not relevant to a 'carole coleman'?" [same
name]

Try experimenting with this search stategy and let me know if it works for you:

To search for CAROLE COLEMAN and only CAROLE COLEMAN, spelled in that
particular way search for:

"CAROLE COLEMAN" 

Include the quotation marks. This tells the engine to look
specifically for this spelling with the words (names) in this specific
order. This will restrict any returns for CAROL COLEMAN, CAROLE
COLEMANN, etc.

To restrict other known data, use (-). For example, if you are looking
for CAROLE COLEMAN but not information about a Carole Coleman in
Ireland, you could search for:

"CAROLE COLEMAN" -"IRELAND"

This method will restrict all returns in which Carole Coleman and
Ireland are both mentioned in the same online article. It isn't
foolproof, meaning that it won't guarantee that you'll find the Carole
Coleman you are looking for, but if you play around with it a lot of
times you can manage to narrow your returns down using certain
-"keywords" until you find what you are looking for. This is
particularly handy with common names, etc, where other known details
can be culled to eliminate hundreds of common, unrelated search
returns.

Let me know if this worked for you.

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

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Clarification of Question by finler-ga on 29 Jul 2004 07:33 PDT

Thank you for your rsponse.  I already tried the quotation before I
posed the question.  Your suggestion involving using a minus sign with
- say - Ireland - is clearly impossible because irrelevant words (and
their optional spellings) are endless.  A search for all the possible
"do not want" words clearly would not be an effective answer.  I am
looking for something that would understand and provide what - say -
you would do if I put the case to you (not a machine) face to face.

Sorry about my delay in finding your reauest for clarification. - sdf

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 29 Jul 2004 07:49 PDT

finler-ga,

I conducted two searches, both of which seemed to produce very focused
results.  Try these yourself (just cut and paste into the Google
search box) and let me know what you think:


Irish journalist "Carole Coleman"

RTE "Carole Coleman"


Either of these searches narrow down the results to only a "Carole
Coleman" who appears on the same page as the terms Irish and
journalist, or who is associated with RTE, the news organization she
works with in Ireland.

What do you think?

pafalafa-ga