Cheryl Booker

SLM 521

Fall 2003

Search Tips

Searching the Web

“Search Tips”

Your teacher has given you an assignment to research the importance of eating a healthy breakfast. You need to search the web, and you don’t want to spend hours and hours on the internet. Don’t get overwhelmed! Your teacher has provided for you a list of 5 simple search tips that you can use to make your searching easier and help you save time.

Tips for Searching the Web

· Be Specific – Tell the search engine exactly what you are looking for. (Example: healthy breakfast instead of breakfast).

· Use the (+) Symbol – When you want to make sure that a search engine finds pages that have all the words you enter, use the (+) symbol. (Example: healthy + breakfast or eating + healthy + breakfast, using the (+) symbol helps you to narrow down your search. Be sure to include a space before the (+) sign.

· Use the (–) Symbol – Sometimes you may want the search engine to find pages that have one word on them, or you may want to exclude a word from your search. The

(–)symbol lets you do this. (Example: Suppose you wanted

to find information on eating breakfast but you don’t want

to get information on eating healthy. You can do this,

eating healthy - eating breakfast. Be sure to include a space before the

(-) sign).

· Use “Quotation Marks” – When you are searching for an exact phrase, put it in quotes. Doing a phrase search can be a much better way to get the information you need. Doing a phrase search tells the search engine to give you pages where the words appear in exactly the order you specify. (Example: “eating a healthy breakfast”). Now only pages that have the words in the exact order shown will be listed.

· Use Search Engine Variety – Use more than one search engine for your search. (Suggested search engines for kids are: Yahooligans, KidsClick, Ask Jeeves for Kids, and OneKey).