Searching - can you find what you want?

Some of my friends are constantly asking me to find something for them on the web.
Even though I tried to send them to google (yep that is a verb now) their request, I usually end up doing it for them. How hard can it be to find what you are looking for online? It shouldn't be if you follow some simple guidelines:

1. Choose keywords carefully
Take a moment to figure out your search words. Do they have another meaning that's more common then what you are looking for? So, if I were looking for information on how to build a book shelf I would avoid using the word "book" and instead search for "building shelf".

2. Use advanced search features
most search engines have advanced searching feature that allow you to specify words that must be included in the search results and words that should not appear in them.
Google's advanced search is available from their home page and allows you to filter search results in a very clear manner.




3. Use Google's auto completion feature
Google suggest is a pretty old google tool that shows you the number of search results as you type. This helps you to remove words that have no results and add other words that have more results. This is especially useful when you only have a single word and google suggests what other words to add to your search to refine it.


4. Google is not the only search engine out there
While Google is the most popular search engine, some other options might be more suited if specific information is what you are looking for. I tend to use Wikipedia when I am not just looking for an item but would like to get a definition of it and not just search results.
Or maybe use flickr when searching for an image. technorati is a very good place if searching for a blog

That's all for now but more information on search techniques will be posted here soon.



Technorati tags: Search Google Flickr Wikipedia Technorati