Search Engine Tips

1. Where to start – If you are a beginning user. Stay away from Meta search engines for now. Hint: If you don’t know what a Meta search engine is then use

http://yahoo.com/

Or

http://www.google.com/

2. What’s the subject – If you are not exactly sure where to start go with a simple subject search.

Example: If you want some baseball stats from long ago type in “Baseball statistics” and go from there.

3. Detail, Details –

In other words, make sure everything is spelled correctly. Search engines work just like a calculator. If you don’t type the right thing in you won’t get the right thing out.

        Example: Type in “witch” for Halloween not “with” or “wich”

        Example: Type in “witch” for Halloween not “which”

4. Signs signs everywhere is signs – When typing in the search, use the + sign lets the search engine know that terms following this sign MUST appear in all pages returned in the results.

Example: Almanac + New York + Baseball + Yankees

Likewise using the - sign while searching tells the search engine what terms NOT to include in your results.

Example: Almanac + New York + Baseball – Mets

 (Who would want to do a search on the Mets anyway?)

5. Conjunction Junction – Use what is termed Boolean operators. Boolean operators also allow you to specify what should and shouldn't be included in your results.

Examples: AND       OR     NOT

  Example:  Almanac and New York and Baseball and Yankees

Almanac and New York and Baseball Not Mets

6. Quote your Quote – If you are looking for some specific phrase such as “Werewolves of London” then put quotes around it. It tells the search engine that it must only return results containing the EXACT phrase you've entered