How to use a search engine to get what your looking for!

Search engine help

Boolean search tools

A person using an internet search engine like www.yahoo.com can find things more efficiently by using "Boolean" commands to direct the search. There are different types of Boolean search tools, and they can be combined:

REQUIRED AND PROHIBITED SEARCH WORDS

Add + to a word that needs to be found in all results.
Example: Sarasota Result: Sarasota County, Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, Sarasota Memorial Hospital

Add - in front of a word that you don't want included in your search results.
Example: python -monty Result: Ball Python, Burmese Python, etc.

DOCUMENT SECTION RESTRICTIONS

add u: in front of a word to restrict searches to documents URLs only.
Add t: in front of a word to restrict searches to documents titles only.

PHRASE MATCHING

Put quote marks around a multiword phrase, and the search engine will look at the phrase as if it were a single word, finding only documents in which that exact phrase appears. It might otherwise find any documents in which all of the words appear, no matter what the sequence.

WILDCARD MATCHING

Adding * after a word returns left-side partial matches.
Example: cap* Results: Capital management, Australian Capital Territory, Cape Town

COMBINING BOOLEAN COMMANDS

You can combine any of the commands as long as you use the order in which they are described above +, - , t:, u:, " " and *

Example + t: football - American Results: Football (Australian) , Football (Gaelic), Football (soccer stadium)

NARROWING YOUR SEARCH

Three simple words can increase both the quality and speed of internet searches:
AND , OR , NOT

Here are some Search engines:

www.msn.com
www.yahoo.com
www.google.com
www.aol.com
www.askjeeves.com
www.LookSmart.com
www.InfoSpace.com
www.Overture.com
www.netscape.com
www.altavista.com
www.alltheweb.com
www.lycos.com
www.webcrawler.com
www.hotbot.com
www.easysearcher.com/index.html

Good stuff. The negative sign '-' is very very usefull. I almost always use in most of my searches.

Just one thing, I am pretty sure all these functions you described do not apply for all search engines, such as the wildcard '*' function not working with google. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure google doesn't allow wildcards.

Anyways, good info,
Greg

The wildcard doesn't work for google as far as I know, but they might be working to change that.

If you want more powerful searches, Google's advanced search is by far the best. It also lets you search sites that don't have their own search engine by restricting your search to a specific domain.

Good selection of info blunt23, but why didn't you post this in the tutorials forum? :D

Quote:

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but why didn't you post this in the tutorials forum?

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Thanks for the positive reply's. The reason I didn't post this is the "tutorials forum" because I never thought it was a tutorial. It's to small to be a tutorial it's just hint's and tip's on how to use a search engine to get the result's you want. Sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum.

It doesn't matter that you posted it here, I just thought that more people might see it if it were in the tutorials forum. Still a lot of good information though. :D

damn blunt32...you scooped me...i sent msmittens an article on this topic for the newsletter about a week ago...although...i'm going to do 2 ...the article i sent was on the history of search engines...the second was fgoing to be on getting what you want out of them...probably still will..but damn..ah wel.....i guess it never hurts to hammer home search it for yourself.... :D