How to use search engines more efficiently

February 10, 2009

Youve probably encountered many times the problem of being unable to find some information on the Internet. Actually the problem does not lay in the fact that the information could not be found, more often than not there is more than enough information which makes one big mess. It is therefore, best to make a specific selection, or make the search engine retrieve only the information that is closely related to the search term. Here, we give you a list of tips and tricks which can help you search the Internet better. Use terms that are closely related to the topic youre searching for, because vague terms return thousands of results. Use phrases with quotation marks. For example, if you enter someones name into the search engine it will return all the pages where only the name or only the surname or both appear. On the other hand, if you enter the search term like this Name Surname than you will get only the pages where those two appear together and not the combinations of them. If the used terms do not return any results, or return inadequate results, use alternative terms. So if were looking for information on computers and do not receive satisfactory results then we can try entering synonyms of the word; PC, etc Insert a plus or a minus sign into your search term. For example, to get results for computers but discard information about laptops then in the search engine enter computers laptops. So, just put a minus sign in front of the word you do not wish to search for. If youre interested in information about a certain format, a file extension that is, then a keyword filetype is used which is followed by the extension. For example, to find documents written in MS Word that contain the word "SEO", type the following into the search field => SEO filetype: doc.