Search Tips For Search Engine Users

Improve your search by using more words: As a general rule, the more words you use, the more accurate your search results will , you will get a smaller set of search results that will be more relevant to you.

Using double quotation marks to search for phrases and proper names: If you enclose two or more words in double quotation marks (“), your search terms will be treated as a phrase. A phrase forces the search engine to find the words you searched for in the same exact order on the Web site.

For example, a search for Business focus is the same as searching for Business AND focus. In this case, sites where the words ‘Business’ and ‘focus’ both exist on the site but not necessarily in the same order or next each other will be returned as matches. On the other hand, a search of “Business focus” will only return Web sites that contained the two words adjacent to each other and in the same order.

Using Boolean operators to force word inclusions and exclusions:

AND – Indicates that sites must contain the word following the AND operator. For example, to find documents that contain the words ‘Finance’, ‘management’ and ‘publication’ enter finance AND management AND publication.

OR – The OR operator causes the search engine to check for the existence of the search terms on either side of the OR operator. If you but couldn’t decide between a Kawasaki or a Suzuki, your search term might be Kawasaki OR Suzuki.

NOT – The NOT operator causes the search engine to eliminate sites based on the existence of the search term following the NOT operator. For example, if you were searching for pages that dealt with tax but weren’t interested in pages that dealt with corporate tax, your search term might be: corporate NOT tax.

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