Search sites promise access to billions of Web pages. But if you don’t enter your search terms correctly, you might find yourself swamped with too many results – and not the ones you’re looking for.
According to Nielsen NetRatings, more than 80 percent of Internet users turn to the top three search sites – Google, Yahoo and MSN, in that order. However, despite advances in indexing the Web, these sites are not foolproof.
Type the words “miserable failure” into any of these search sites. The top result is George W. Bush’s biography. Why the unexpected result? Using knowledge about how search engines rank their results, a few savvy pranksters were able to manipulate them. There are three ways to improve your search results.
Choose your search terms carefully, learn how to use special search “operators” and use keywords.
When choosing search terms, be specific but not wordy. For example, imagine you want information on artists. If you use “painters,” you’ll get results on both the artistic kind and those who charge $300 per bedroom. However, “18th century painters” will give you more pertinent results. (Search engines are not case sensitive. So “18th Century Painters” and “18th century painters” yield the same results.) Google, MSN and Yahoo also use operators to focus results.
Use quotation marks to find complete phrases. “New York” “fashion institute” will return different results than “New York fashion institute.” You can use plus and minus signs to include or exclude words. By entering “+domestic cats” (without quotation marks), the search site will find pages that contain all the terms preceded by “+.” If you enter “+rescue cats-feral” (without quotation marks), the search site will return pages about rescue cats with no mention of feral. The word NOT in all capital letters can be substituted for the minus sign, such as “+rescue cats NOT feral.” Use the word OR in all capital letters if you’re interested in alternatives. Let’s say you want information on camping or swimming in Hawaii. In the search box, type “Hawaii camping OR swimming.” You also can use the pipe symbol, which is the vertical bar on the keyboard, such as “Hawaii camping | swimming.” Google, MSN and Yahoo say they include the operator AND by default. However, Google produces different results with the search terms “cat dog” and “cat AND dog.”
To focus results even more, use the search engines’ advanced search features. By selecting variables from a drop-down box or clicking a check box, you can limit results to sites updated within a specific time frame, sites that contain a certain file type (html, pdf, doc, etc.), sites that use a specific domain suffix (.com, .edu, .gov, etc.), and more.
On Yahoo’s main page, the Advanced link is to the right of the search button. Google’s Advanced Search link is to the right of the search box. MSN uses Search Builder; its link is below the search box at http://search.msn.com.
Finally, even the most innocuous keywords can return pornography. To avoid that, the big three search sites have a SafeSearch feature. It is located in Google’s “Preferences,” Yahoo’s “Advanced Search” and MSN’s “Settings.”
