Smart Nouveau Computer Tips #5 - November, 2002

By Jeff Sheets

Happy Halloween! Here is this month's tip. I had a lot of questions about search engines and how to find what you want on the Internet. If a friend may benefit from this tip, please forward this email to them so that they can sign up for this monthly newsletter too.

Surfing the Internet - Search Engine Tips

When using an Internet search engine such as Altavista, Google, or Yahoo Remember to keep your search terms as short and specific as possible. One problem most of us encounter is that of getting too many hits.

My favorite way to whittle down these hits is to start adding words with a + between each word that best describe the results I want, and then perform a new search and continue until I get few enough hits to start actually looking. If you are on a dialup connection, there is nothing worse than waiting the customary 30 seconds or more just to find out that there is no information.

For example, while searching in Google if you want to know how deep to dig a trench in Michigan when installing sprinklers yourself:

• sprinklers returns 259,000 hits
  
• sprinklers +trench returns 2,710 hits
  
• sprinklers +trench +yourself returns 404 hits
  
• sprinklers +trench +yourself +michigan returns 35 hits
  

For each search, browse the page for clues to answer your question. Each new search, look for terms that relate to what you want to find and add it to the search terms until you zero in on what you are looking for. This is one of many ways to search within results. Search the list below for tips to customize your search:

+ To search for results containing specific words, use a + between each word. Use no spaces or other punctuation. (Example: mountain+whitney returns all items specifically referring to Mount Whitney, but no other mountains.


- Use a - before a word you want to exclude from the search. (don't forget the space before the -).


Quotes (“”) To search for an exact phrase, put it in quotes (Example: "thank goodness it’s friday"). To maintain a certain capitalization, put the word in quotes. Words with punctuation between them are treated as if they are surrounded in quotes. All punctuation marks are treated equally. (Example: Ford.mustang/convertible gives the same results as "ford mustang convertible".)


AND Finds documents containing all of the specified words or phrases. mount AND whitney finds documents with both the word mount and the word whitney.


OR Finds documents containing at least one of the specified words or phrases. mount OR whitney finds documents containing either mount or whitney. The found documents could contain both items, but not necessarily.


AND NOT Excludes documents containing the specified word or phrase. mount AND NOT whitney finds documents with mount but not containing whitney. NOT must be used with another operator, like AND. Most search engines do not accept 'mount NOT whitney'; instead, specify mount AND NOT whitney.


NEAR Finds documents containing both specified words or phrases within 10 words of each other. mount NEAR whitney would find documents with mount whitney, but probably not any other kind of mountain.


* The asterisk is a wildcard; any letters can take the place of the asterisk. mount* would find documents with mount, mountain and mountainside. You must type at least three letters before the *. You can also place the * in the middle of a word. This is useful when you're unsure about spelling. Colo*r would find documents that contain color and colour.


( ) Use parentheses to group complex Boolean phrases. For example, (mount AND whitney) AND (climbing OR rappelling) finds documents with the words climbing mount whitney' or ‘rappelling mount whitney’.


: Use a colon to restrict your search to specific domains. (Example admission site:www.stanford.edu returns the page named admission site on Stanford University’s web site.)


: Also use a colon to find specific image files (Example “image:mars” returns all pages that contain an image named “mars”. This may be mars.jpg, mars.gif, mars.png, etc.

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