Search Tip Information Sheet

The enormous amount of material available on the World Wide Web can be overwhelming . Below are five tips to help make your journey through the information as productive as possible:

1. Be as precise as possible.

Think about what you really need and want and ask for exactly that. As a middle school math teacher, using just the word math yielded me over 10,500,000 results. Looking through these, would not be a very productive way to spend my time. Middle school fractions, on the other hand, got me 59,100 results. And middle school fraction worksheets got me 2,260 results.

2. Use quotation marks:

The use of quotation marks gives you the exact phrase you are looking

for, in that exact order, without breaking down the individual pieces of the search. For example: if you wanted information about the “University of Washington”, and did not have quotes, your search would yield 2,390,000 results. Not only would you get the University of Washington, but you would get all results with the word University or the word Washington. By using quotes, you can narrow the search to 893,000 results.

3. Be careful of synonyms and words that have several meanings.

Suppose you are doing a report in your science class on stars. You are sure you will find lots of information. When you search, using the word-stars- you find not only stars (as in constellations) but also movie stars and Broadway stars. This yielded 12,400,000 results. Just by using the words- science stars- brought the number of results down to 1,210,000.

4. Using + or – to enhance your search:

The use of the plus lets you add to your search, narrowing it down until you get the exact sites you need. In an attempt to find out about the Terps basketball team, I began with college (which resulted in over 38,000,000 sites), then I added +basketball (1,550,000), +march madness (39, 400), +terps (902).

Suppose I wanted to find out about college basketball but didn’t want any mention of the Terps. I could use the – sign to block those sites out, for example college +basketball –terps.

5. Use advanced searches if necessary:

Several of the search engines (Google, Yahoo and Altavista) allow you run advanced searches. These advanced searches give you the opportunity to change the language you are using, search by the date and time the material is posted, use or not use filters in your search and ask for only a certain number of matches. You have the advantage of asking for and/or searches and eliminating words. By asking for a search on the history of Spain, in Spanish, I was rewarded with a text in correct Spanish-a plus for a student studying the language and needing to write a report. By typing in lung cancer treatments for the past 3 months, I was able to find the most current information available.