Tips and tricks for a more effective online search

Online search is simple: just type what you are looking for in the search box, hit Enter or click the Search button, and your search engine (Google/Yahoo/Bing) will search the web for content that's relevant to your search. Most of the time, you'll find exactly what you're looking for with just a basic query (the word or phrase you search for). However, sometimes when looking for specific things online you are inundated with search results that are too general. In such cases it helps to know some tips and tricks of online search.

Here we have described a few tips for search within Google. However, these same tips are also useful for other search engines like Yahoo and Bing.

Some basic facts

• Every word matters. Generally, all the words you put in the query will be used.
• Search is always case insensitive. A search for Triumph Web Solutions is the same as a search for triumph web solutions.
• Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[] and other special characters.

Tips for better searches

Keep it simple:
If you're looking for a particular company, just enter its name, or as much of its name as you can recall. If you're looking for a particular concept, place, or product, start with its name. Describe what you need with as few terms as possible. Most queries do not require advanced operators or unusual syntax. Simple is good. Since all words are used, each additional word limits the results. If you limit too much, you will miss a lot of useful information. The main advantage to starting with fewer keywords is that, if you don't get what you need, the results will likely give you a good indication of what additional words are needed to refine your results on the next search.

Use the words that are most likely to appear on the page:
A search engine is not a human, it is a program that matches the words you give to pages on the web. Think how the page you are looking for will be written. For example, instead of saying my head hurts say headache, because that's the term a medical page will use.

Choose descriptive words:
The more unique the word is the more likely you are to get relevant results. Words that are not very descriptive, like 'document,' 'website,' 'company,' or 'info,' are usually not needed. Keep in mind, however, that even if the word has the correct meaning but it is not the one most people use, it may not match the pages you need. For example, celebrity ringtones is more descriptive and specific than celebrity sounds.

Tips for narrowing down search results

Phrase search (""):
By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for "Characteristics of a good website" (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to "good website characteristics".

Search within a specific website (site:):
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query tips site:triumphwebsolutions.com will return pages about Tips but only from www.triumphwebsolutions.com. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example "tax site:.gov" will return results only from a .gov domain and iraq site:.iq will return results only from Iraqi sites.

Terms you want to exclude (-):
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query anti-virus software, the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query anti-virus -software will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example jaguar -cars -football -os. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the 'site:' operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

Fill in the blanks (*):
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search Google * will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

Search exactly as is (+):
Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query child care (with a space), or California history for the query ca history. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.

The OR operator:
Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 will give you results about either one of these years, whereas San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)

Reference: Google web search help