by Ben Tasker

Created on: December 06, 2008   Last Updated: January 06, 2009

Search engines can be an incredibly useful utility, however if used incorrectly it can be very difficult to find the content you desire.

In order to understand the best techniques for using search engines it is important to first understand how Search Engines operate. They scour the Internet automatically reading pages and picking out keywords, some also rate the content based on a variety of criteria. Google uses it's PageRank system to ensure that the best pages are listed at the beginning of your search results. Whilst 'crawling' the Internet, the programs used to generate the search listings (known as Bots) generate an Index. It is this Index that you are searching when you enter your search terms, although Search engines strive to update their listings as regularly as possible, there is a chance that newer pages will not yet be included.

This article will look at how to generate relevant search results shortly, firstly it is important to learn how to navigate the search results. Many search engines will provide you with Paid links as well as free links (known as Organic links), in Google Paid links appear on the right hand side, and often at the top of your search results. These ads may or may not be relevant to you, the advertiser has simply paid Google to place these links there.

The free listings contain the results retrieved from the Search Index,and these primarily will be your main focus. The closer to the top of the listing a link is, the more relevant the search engine believes it to be to your keywords. Sometimes the links will appear not to work, this may be because the referenced page has been deleted since it was last indexed, however some search engines cache pages when they index them. On Google there is often a link below the listing saying Cached. If you do find the page does not exist it can be well worth viewing the cached page.

Getting relevant results largely relies on the keywords you use, and the way in which you define them. However, the search engine you use can also have an impact, if there is a search engine dedicated to Open Source Software, for example, you are likely to find far more relevant results through using that than you are through searching for Open Source Software through Google or Yahoo. With this in mind it is always worth checking www.searchenginewatch.com to see if there is a more relevant search engine for your needs.

Once you have located a suitable search engine, you need to ask it to find the information you require.

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