How To Do Better Internet Searches

Step 1: Go to an internet search engine

The most popular search engine is Google, but there are also many others to choose from. Make sure you go to your country's version of the search engine, as it will include an option to prioritise search results geographically that will help you find results relevant to you.

Step 2: Choose several key words

Google searches for pages that include all of your search terms, so the more detailed and relevant your search is, the better your results will be. If you are looking for a high quality hotel in London, adding 'luxury' to a search for 'London' and 'hotel' will greatly help to narrow down your search.

Google automatically perform an ‘and' search unless you tell it otherwise. This means that when we search for ‘Luxury' ‘London' ‘hotels', the search engine finds pages that contain those words anywhere within them. Putting quotation marks around the words will make Google search for pages where those words are found together and in that order. Mixing phrases and key words into a single search can reduce a million results down to hundreds or less, making your life a lot easier.

Step 3: Search for one of 2 or more terms

If you would like to find pages that contain at least one of your search terms, but not necessarily all of them, put the word OR in capitals between them.

Step 4: Performing a negative search

If you would like to find pages that do not contain one of your search terms, put a minus before the term that should be absent from your results.

Step 5: Search for a file type

If you only want to see pages formatted in a certain way, such as a word document or an Adobe PDF, put in the search term 'filetype:' and the file extension you are looking for. A word document search would read 'filetype: doc'.

Step 6: Search for page location

If you only want to see pages that contain your search terms in specific places on the page, use the 'allin' search. To search only page titles, type 'allintitle:', to search only text bodies, type 'allintext:', to search only within web addresses, type 'allinurl:', and to search only text within web links, type 'allinanchor:'

Step 7: Advanced search

Google's advanced search page lets you perform all of these searches without having to remember how to write them in the search. It also has other search options, such as the language a page is written in, the date a page was written and a page's copyright status.

Step 8: Try more than one search engine

Different search engines have different ways of sorting search results, including how much space and prominence they give to company websites in return for a fee. They can also have some unique advanced search options that could help your search. The biggest search engines on the net are google, yahoo, msn and ask.