by Melissa J Luther

Created on: December 10, 2008   Last Updated: August 19, 2009

The internet is a wonderful resource for research, and our favorite search engine can bring an entire library's worth of information right into our living rooms. It's also easier than ever to get lost traveling the information superhighway. With billions of web pages available, just entering a keyword or two into a search box often returns a lot of irrelevant results. So how can we more quickly and easily find the pages containing the information we seek?

There are ways to refine your search and target the pages that contain relevant information without wasting too much time on those that don't.

>Choosing a Search Engine<

First, decide which search engine will best serve your needs. We all have a default engine we turn to regularly, but that engine may not always be the best choice. Different search engines return different results for the same search string, because they each have their own index of web pages.

Each engine has its own software (spider) that searches (crawls) the web looking for new and updated content. Different engines focus on different parts of the web, so each index is also different. When you do a search, the engine searches its index (not the live web) and returns pages that it considers most relevant. Trying multiple search engines will give you an idea of which ones find the best results for the type of searching you do regularly. Proficient internet searchers have multiple search engines in their research toolkit.

Some search engines specialize in a specific industry. You can find these specialty engines by visiting your favorite major search engine and searching for them. For example, to find an engine specializing in engineering, use this search string: "search engine" AND engineering. Use specialty engines just like any other search engine.

>Boolean Search<

To ensure the search engine understands your request, speak its language. Simple Boolean Logic commands, called operators and modifiers, help target your results better than using just one or two keywords. A well-constructed search string (the combination of keywords and Boolean commands that tells the search engine what to find) eliminates many irrelevant pages before you ever see them.

- Boolean Operators -

The three basic Boolean operators are "AND," "OR," and "NOT". These words mean the same thing to search engines as they mean to you. They do need to be entered in all capital letters; otherwise the search engine will not recognize them as commands.

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