Internet Search Tips

So many people have gotten familiar with using the internet and are comfortable with hopping on and searching for whatever it is they need to find, whether it’s information or shopping related. Though many people are comfortable with searching for what they need on the internet, too many of these people are wasting their valuable time getting irrelevant search results because they don’t take the time to narrow down their search terms.

There are some basic search techniques that can save you a lot of time and potential frustration, as well as help you avoid large amounts of those tedious keyword spam websites. You know the ones I’m talking about. You type in the name of a popular movie and the first full page of search engine results are all websites that have no actual content, but just huge amassments of advertisement links.

The first way to help your search engine usage is to be sure to use the addition or plus symbol to show that certain search terms must be included in the websites that the search engine will return as relevant matches. If you simply type in all of your search terms, they don’t have to all appear in search results, only some of them. By using the plus symbol, you can greatly narrow the results of your internet search.

Another basic technique in using an internet search engine to it’s full capacity is to enclose search phrases in quotation marks. If you are searching for an apple pie recipe and don’t want to have to sort through all kinds of other pie recipes, then be sure to enclose the phrase ‘apple pie’ in double quotes, like this: 'apple pie'. Better yet, for an apple pie recipe, enclose the entire phrase 'apple pie recipe' in quotation marks.

Then, you can use both the addition symbol and quotation marks in conjunction for greater control over your search results. If the term ‘apple pie’ must be included in the results that are returned, enter it like this: +'apple pie' . Let’s say that though the phrase ‘apple pie’ is important, you also wouldn’t mind hearing about cheery or blackberry pie, then you could add the terms ‘cherry’ and/or ‘blackberry’ to the search query without adding a plus symbol in front of them.

If, on he other hand, you’ve been so successful at narrowing your search results that you get none, or too few, simply undo some of the steps, For example, try removing the quotation marks form phrases in order to get a greater number of returned website results.

Some people don’t like using search engines at all, and prefer to use directories, such as Yahoo. Web directories are organizations of websites, just like search engines, but are only added when a live person has accessed the site and approved it to be added to the directory. This way, you will not encounter tons of irrelevant websites. These are quite different than search engines in that they do not spider web pages, but pages in a directory must have been submitted by a human. While this can be great for quality of content, if you are needing to scour the net for a particular bit of info, picture or something like that, you obviously would want to use a search engine over an internet directory.

Aura Mirchandani is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory.