Internet Searching Basics

     
     Trying to find websites that actually contain what you are searching for can be a frustrating experience. Often you have to trawl through several pages of sites that have nothing to do with your query, most trying to sell you something or get your email address, etc. The term for this "search relevance".
 
     Search engines, such as the most popular one, "Google", strive to provide relevant search results, using complicated methods to rank website pages. The idea is to put the sites that are most likely to be relevant to the search query at the top of the list of results. The methods used are automated; there isn't a team of people reading all the websites and then deciding which ones go at the top. What happens is that Google uses computers to "read" websites, storing the data they find, which is then put through an "algorithm" which helps them to decide where to rank the site. The decision is based on such things as the repetition of key words, whether they are bold or large font, the number of links to the page from other highly ranked sites, how fast the page loads etc. In fact search engines are very secretive about just how this process works, because knowing this allows web designers to get their page ranked higher. And in fact this is probably what has happened when the top sites in the search results don't really match your query!
 

     Here are a few tips you can follow to help make the results more likely to contain relevant results.
 
     1. No need to write full sentences.
     Search engines don't read short words like a, an, to, of, in, etc. They look for key words. Try to choose the most important words. Lets say you want to know where Mozart died. If you type "Where did Mozart die?" The search engine will probably only see the words "Mozart" and "die".  Thinking about the keywords that are likely in the sentence with the info you seek, you would say something like "Mozart" "died" (instead of "die") and "city".
 
     2. Use Several Key Words
     Typing in several keywords will narrow the search. So something like "low cost budget b&b cambridge" is better than "b&b cambridge". Also if you don't capitalize letters, it will find both upper and lower case; if you do capitalize, it will only find upper case.

 
     3. Use + and -
     If you know you want a specific word to appear in the result, you can put a "+" sign before the word. This will eliminate any pages which do not contain that word. Similarly the "-" sign will exclude a certain word. Lets say you want to find free antivirus software. By putting in "+free antivirus software -shareware -demo" you are likely to have better results.

 
     4. Use Quotation Marks
     This can be very effective. When you use quote marks it tells the search engine to find exactly the words typed in the order you type them. Lets say you want to find out what year Mozart composed Don Giovanni. If you type "Mozart composed Don Giovanni in" (including the quote marks!) you will probably hit the result in the top spot. This is also great for finding phone numbers. Say you want the number of Domino's Pizza in Cambridge. If you already know the prefix for Cambridge is 01223, then typing 'Domino's Pizza' (without quotes) and then "01223" the number will most likely be displayed in the results at or near the top.
Here are a few links to other sites on the internet that provide more detail on searching the internet: