Jennifer Postal

Elective #7

The Internet can be a great resource when doing assignments for school. It is important for users to be aware of the best ways to maximize their time when using the Internet. Below are several tips that you may find helpful when using the Internet. Happy searching!!!

1. Be as specific as possible when typing your search terms. Your search will yield more relevant results.

Ex. General Specific

baseball Baltimore Orioles baseball

music classical music

politics presidential election of 2000

books romance novels

2. When searching for a phrase use quotation marks. This will allow the whole phrase to be searched and not just the individual words.

Ex. “Baltimore Orioles” not Baltimore Orioles

If you search the second one you will get things on both the city of Baltimore as well as oriole birds.

3. Capitalization is not important. When typing in a topic it doesn’t matter if all of the word is uppercase or lowercase or a mixture of both, all of the same results will appear.

Ex. Jackie Robinson, jackie robinson or JaCKie roBINsON

4. Use an advanced search in order to narrow down the topic even further. Users can restrict the date or where the search term appears on the page.

Ex. (taken from the Google Advanced Search Engine homepage http://www.google.com/advanced_search)

Date

Return web pages updated in the

anytime past 3 months past 6 months past year

Occurrences

Return results where my terms occur

anywhere in the page in the title of the page in the text of the page in the URL of the page in links to the page

5. Common words such as “and”, “a” and “the” will not help refine your search so avoid using them.

Ex. The history of baseball, Instead use baseball history

The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Instead use Red Hot Chili Peppers

6. All search engines are different so be sure to check out the help area in order to use the search engine properly.