Google.

The word is synonymous with "search". However, doing an efficient and effective search on the internet is more than just typing a keyword into Google. In fact, Google may not even be your best choice.

There are two main ways to improve your search results. First, use Boolean Logic. Second, use the right search engine for the job.

Boolean Logic (don't look so scared. It's really much easier than you think.)is just a set of "operators" and "modifiers" to help narrow down your search results. There are also "field search commands", but that will get too complicated for this article.

First, the most common operators:

1. AND this tells the search engine to find pages that contain all the keywords you have entered. (ex: job AND finance) This is actually the default operator on Google, so you do not need to type the word "AND" between your keywords in Google.
2. OR this tells the search engine to find pages that contain at least one of your keywords (ex: finance OR money)
3. NOT this finds pages that do not contain the word(s) that follow it. This one is a little tricky, as the different search engines actually use different terms. For example, Alta Vista = "AND NOT", while Google = "-" (a minus sign immediately before the word, with no space in between, example: -money)

Modifiers are used in conjunction with the operators:

1. Quotation marks use these to find an exact phrase. For example "search engine" will find that exact phrase in pages, while searching without quotes will find the word "search" and the word "engine" in the page, but not necessarily as the exact phrase.
2. Parentheses these are used to define a subset of a search string. For example, if you are looking for job openings requiring a PhD in either Biology or Toxicology, your search would look like this: (biology OR toxicology) AND PhD.

The major search engines actually have "advanced search" options that will help you with this. The advanced search page asks you what words you want to include, what words you want to exclude, what exact phrase you want, and more. You just fill in the blanks. Then the search engine constructs the Boolean search string for you. This can be the easier option since the different engines do handle some of the operators and modifiers differently.

If you really want to get your most relevant search results in the first page or two, Boolean Logic is truly the way to go.

The other key to searching efficiently

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