3. Browsers
3.10. Searching
The secret of using a search engine such as Google® lies in choosing the best key words or phrases to locate useful web sites.
Suppose you have a special interest in mountain climbing and you would like to find websites that can give you information on mountains to visit in Nepal.
You can use one of the following keywords or phrases:
mountain – gives about 289 000 000 possible sites
mountain climbing – gives about 85 000 000 possible sites
“mountain climbing” – gives about 1 930 000 possible sites
“mountain climbing sites” – gives you 143 000 possible sites
“mountain climbing sites” Nepal – gives you 27 200 possible sites
What did you do to narrow down the number of sites?
mountain – search sites that contains the word “mountain”
mountain climbing – search sites that contains the words “mountain” and “climbing”
“mountain climbing” – add parentheses to search sites that contains the phrase “mountain climbing” and not the separate words
“mountain climbing sites” – search sites that contains the phrase “mountain climbing sites” and not the separate words/phrases such as “mountain climbing” or “climbing sites”
“mountain climbing sites” Nepal – look for websites where the phrase “mountain climbing sites” appear with the word Nepal.
From the above it is evident that you have to be as specific as possible in your searching criteria (and make no spelling errors) to get the best searching results. Always try different combinations and techniques until you get the desired results.
Google® has optional search tools and an Advanced Search section to further narrow your search by date, location and other parameters. On the main Google search page, you can find the Advanced Search option by clicking on Settings in the lower right corner of the pages
Although it is not always helpful, Google and other search engines will guess what you are trying to locate and start providing results even as you are still typing your query.