Don't you feel comfortable in the face of the boundless vastness of information on the Web? Read this simple guide to learn how to perform targeted searches, you will get all the information you are looking for in a few moments.
Steps
Step 1. Choose a search engine
Type the following string 'search engines' in the address bar of your favorite browser, you will get a list of websites specialized in searching for information in the cyber space. Here is a list of the most used search engines:
- Ask
- Bing
- Blekko
- Dogpile
- DuckDuckGo
- Yahoo
Step 2. Press the enter key on your computer
Step 3. Choose a specific set of words, or a phrase that best describes what you are looking for
Use synonyms. Type your chosen words in the search bar of your chosen engine.
- Normally, punctuation and the use of capital letters is not necessary.
- Search engines usually discard words of lesser importance, such as articles, conjunctions and prepositions. For example 'the, and, or, from, for, etc.'.
Step 4. Press the enter key on your computer
Step 5. Evaluate the results
Check the list of web pages obtained trying to find the information you need.
Step 6. Repeat the above steps as necessary
- Choose a different search engine.
- For the search, use more or less specific words, narrowing or expanding the results of your search.
Step 7. Use the 'Advanced Search' option available in many search engines
Step 8. Use the 'Site Map' tool
Step 9. It is not correct to assume that the object of your search is equally visible on all search engines, making the choice of the tool used irrelevant
The algorithms with which search engines sort the results, also based on the consistency of the content with the search, are very complex and are often considered real business secrets, obviously varying from software to software. While all search engines will 'agree' in an analysis of the most popular sites, since these are less visited web pages, the indexing criteria will be different. For this reason, it may make sense to perform the same search with different search engines.
Advice
- Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase or set of words, such as "flower arrangements".
- Type simple questions such as "what time is it?"
- Use the minus symbol (-) as a prefix to those words you want to exclude from the search, such as "recipes -meat", if you are looking for vegetarian recipes.
- While you're looking for the information you need, bookmark any other site that interests you.
- Use the plus sign (+) as a prefix of a word to include it in the search, you will only get the results that have all the words in the list in them. For example + recipes + fish to have a list of web pages containing both words.
