Posts Tagged ‘search engines’

The answer to almost any question is literally at your fingertips. Type the right words into Google’s search bar and within seconds thousands, often hundreds of thousands, of answers are spit back at you. The question is: What are those right words?”

I always took searching for granted, and it wasn’t until I recently spent some time with friends and family that aren’t on the computer as much as I am, that I realized there were some simple tips that might be helpful.

1. Ask exactly what you want - be as specific as possible.
2. Use a lot of words - even a sentence. If you only use one or two generic terms, you aren’t going to get the exact information you’re looking for.
3. If you’re asking a technical question, there’s a good chance Google will give you some results with links to forums. These are great places to find answers. There is always a really good chance that someone else is experiencing the same problems you are, and the wonderful people that contribute to the forums have provided a solution.
4. Take a quick peek at the website address before clicking on the results. After a little practice, you’ll begin to recognize sites that are selling products and may not have much information. If you’re looking to buy, then that’s a different story.
5. If you are in the market to make a purchase, don’t forget about the links on the right (the paid ones). The merchants advertising there have put a lot of research into the keywords they have chosen, so there is a very good chance that those ads will bring you to just what you are looking for.
6. If you are looking for something specific, use quotations around the words that should be grouped together. Google will look for webpages that have those specific words, in that specific order for you.
7. If Google isn’t returning helpful results, try the other search engines: Ask.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com.
8. If you are looking for specific “How To” information, try going directly to an article directory. They have thousands of articles on almost any topic you can think of. Some good ones to try are EzineArticles.com and eHow.com.

These are some of the basic principles that I use when I am looking for information online, and I hope they provide a good start to help you learn to search more effectively. If you have any other tips to add, please leave a comment!