Searching: the Basics

The typical search done on the web goes as follows: You reach your favorite search site and enter a word or two in a text box. After which you either press enter or click the submit button, and your query is on its way to the data base. A few seconds later you are confronted with about 100,000 hits that match the query that you submitted. You click through as many irrelevant links as possible before you are overwhelmed with the desire to forget the whole thing. The few words you typed in, caused you to perform the worst search possible.

Do Not be afraid just ask a Question!

The most successful way to search the web, is to consider the text field as a place to ask a question rather than a place to enter a few key words. The question should address exactly what you are looking for. Search engines do an adequate job of returning respectable hits to queries such as "Where can I get a driver to run my Winmodem with Windows NT?".

Searching: Advanced

Learning to work with Booleans can give you an advantage in getting the most out of your search, of which the most widely used are and, or and not. For instance try structuring your queries with a few or all of them included. For example, Winmodem and Windows NT, or Winmodem or Sportster and Windows NT not Windows 95. Not all search engines follow the strict rules imposed by Booleans, some simply move the sites that include all the words closer to the top starting with the most relevant.

The use of quotes and parentheses can help.

To require that the words are included on all the links returned, the + sign can be used to represent and and the - sign to represent not. But if you are still faced with too many choices you still have two more aces up your sleeves. The " " and the ( ), these two operators cause the search engines to find exact phrases and to group terms, as in this example. (Winmodem not Sportster) and "drivers or upgrades" and WindowsNT not Windows 95. While the use of Booleans will yield more precise results, there is always room for improvement.

Searching: Improving the Search

The top 20 links should hold what you are looking for, if not then it is very important to study what the search engine returns to you. If you still get a lot of irrelevant matches, you will need to reconsider your search. Alternately too few matches will cause you to broaden your search.