7 ways to get more out of your search engine

While Google is my default (I use Chrome a lot as a browser, which has the advantage of making every tab’s address bar into a query box), I have been using Bing a fair bit to widen my searches. I’ve been, as often as not, happy with the results.

There are a couple of sayings that I hear all the time, and yet they would seem to contradict each other.

“Be careful what you put on the Internet,” says one. “It lives forever.”

Sage advice, although it seems to have no impact whatsoever on young people who delight in posting photographs and status updates that can be easily located by, say, HR professionals who screen job applications. But that’s a topic for another day!

The second saying is a bit of black humour that goes something like this: “Where’s the best place to hide a dead body? Page 2 of Google search results.”

More charitable versions cite the third page, but the point is the same: in the world of search, if you’re not easily found, you may as well wither and die.

That explains why a great many people spend time trying to get you, and millions of others, to land in their ballpark when you type something into the Google search bar.

Still, I constantly hear from people that they have not been able to find what they’re looking for when they search for something. This column is about some practical tips on finding more needles in the haystacks of the web.

I’m writing primarily about Google, which is my default engine — although, as we’ll see, it’s not exclusive. The tips you’re about to read are written with Google in mind. Bear in mind, though, that Google has indexed several dozen trillion pages, which is a mindaltering amount of data. Our job is to make your search efforts more effective.

Tip No. 1: Quotation marks. This is by far and away the most helpful tool you have. Don’t search for Newfoundland recipes. Search for “Newfoundland recipes.” (That cuts the list of possible results from millions to thousands.) Try a proper name (e.g., “Kathy Dunderdale”) together in quotation marks, or a company’s full name, or a logical succession of words (e.g., “funny family movies”)

Tip No. 2: Add more search terms. On top of a name or phrase in quotation marks, add a word or two that will help refine the results. If you’re looking for something new, like a news story, add 2013.

Tip No. 3: Consider the source. Let’s say you’re looking for material on poverty, and you’re particularly interested in what’s on the provincial government website. Solution: look for poverty and then site: gov.nl.ca. The last bit limits the search to the government directory.

Tip No. 4. Be even more refined. Another option for narrowing a search is to use inurl:keyword, which is a way of plucking out phrases that appear in a web address or URL. I use it when I’m looking for news articles, and will type in the media source as a keyword.

Tip No. 5. Add and subtract. Google has built-in Boolean logic, sort of. In other words, you don’t have to use a +, or plus sign, to add something to a search; you just type in the extra word. You can, though, subtract things from your search results to filter. For example, typing poverty -strategy (that is, a minus before the word you want to avoid) will give you results with the first word that don’t have the second.

Tip No. 6. Think of alternatives. I appreciate the frustration that people have when they look for something they know exists — and they come up blank. One of the options is to try different search terms, including synonyms, less precise language, and sometimes just plain creative thinking. ( Just take notice at how a small change can sometimes produce very different results.) Another suggestion: put a tilde (~) directly in front of a keyword. This will direct the search engine to find synonyms.

Tip No. 7. Shop elsewhere. If you’re not getting what you want, try another search engine. While Google is my default (I use Chrome a lot as a browser, which has the advantage of making every tab’s address bar into a query box), I have been using Bing a fair bit to widen my searches. I’ve been, as often as not, happy with the results.

Meanwhile, don’t hesitate to take advantage of Google’s own tools.

Advanced search

www.google.com/advanced_search

Going here opens up a variety of search options, some of which you may not have known even existed.

Inside Search: Tips and Tricks

www.google.com/insidesearch/tipstricks/

Find out more about what a “simple” search engine can do, with suggestions from the people who not only made it, but continue to innovate with it.