Getting the Most Out of Your Search Engine

Search engines; they're a staple of everyday life these days. However, people aren't getting the most out of their search engine of choice and don't know it!

If you've ever used the Internet, you most likely know what a search engine is and the basics of how to use one; however, I'm sure you've also thrown your hands up in the air and just admitted defeat to the Internet Gods. "I just can't find what I'm looking for!"

With so many ads, fake webpages to mislead you, and general clutter floating around on the web these days, it can be difficult to get to what you're really looking for without aridiculous amount of time and effort....that is, if you don't know how to optimize your search results.

The first tip we're going to cover is grammar usage. Search engines aren't people, so they aren't going to understand extra operatives. Searching for "How do I cook the best Filet Mignon?", for example, is not going to bring you the best results. Being the intelligent person you are, you'll be tempted to use full sentences, proper grammar, and any other embellishments as you would when speaking normally. However, it would be far more effective to write "Filet Mignon Best Recipe." You would be surprised at how many people actually do this, however, thinking it's effective. Take a look at this searchspy to see what other people are looking for right now. (This can be pretty funny...oh, and helpful, too! Ahem.)

Why is that? Well, let's take a look at Google. If you were, in fact, to type "How do I cook the best Filet Mignon?", the first thing the engine is going to do, before you even see your results page, is drop the terms "how" and "I". These are referred to as Unnesecarry Operators, and will either clutter your results or simply waste your time to type. When search engines crawl the web for results, they match each word in your search term with the content on the web page. So, grammar aside, the more terms that you include that have to do with your desired content, the better your results will be. Here's a short list of these unnecessary operators:

• And
• I
• But
• Or
• If

So, in conclusion, if you're looking for the best asian filet mignon recipes (with low sodium!), instead of typing "What are the best low sodium asian filet mignon recipes?", try "Best low sodium asian filet mignon"

Next we have the optional operators. These are used to enhance your search results, and are a godsend for finding specific information.

• "."

• -

• intitle:

• site:

These are a few of the most common extra operators that can easily help you find that needle in a haystack!

Let's look at the quotation first. Perhaps you're searching for a book titled How to cook the best Filet Mignon, and your results are littered with sites containing recipes and articles on the delicious dish. In this case, all you'd have to do is put quotes around your title: "How to cook the best Filet Mignon". This would cause your search engine to only display results containing the full term that you searched for. The quotations are easily the most useful operator.

Next the Minus, or -. This is one of my favourites and is really simple to understand. Perhaps you're searching for something that has a common name; for example, let's say you want to look up recipes for filet mignon that don't contain salt. Rather than filtering through all the results yourself, you could simply try: "Filet Mignon recipes -salt". This would display all web pages that have filet mignon recipes but not the word salt anywhere. While this could easily be a godsend, it may also filter out some results you may want, so use this sparingly.

Intitle: is another one of my favourites. Perhaps you're looking for a specific web page, but you can't remember the address, only what it was called. All you would have to do is type intitle:"searchterm", and your search engine will quickly gather up all pages that contain that word/words in the title.

Finally, we have site:. Site: is extremely handy. Perhaps you frequent a recipe website that contains thousands of different pages, but has no search engine! While this would be uncommon, it does happen, and when you find yourself in this situation, don't worry. You would simply type what you're looking for, Site:, and then the site name. For example, if you were searching for Filet Mignon recipes...(Yes, more filet mignon!)

Filet Mignon Site:www.websitehere.com

Pretty simple, no? So let's use them all (Besides intitle). I want to search for Grilled (and only grilled) Filet Mignon recipes that contain no salt on a webstie that has no search engine

"Grilled Filet Mignon" -salt site:www.websitehere.com

And there you have it!

Thank you for reading my article, and I hope to see you again soon! Happy searching!

AlexJC