Effective Searches

It is estimated that The Internet has over 600 billion pages. It's no wonder that we are unable to find things as quickly as we want. If, however, we explore utilizing computer database searching we will find that our results are much more accurate.

Quite often, when we are looking for information we simply type in the phrase. But, the Internet was designed around logic - Boolean Logic. It was created by George Boole to create relationships between concepts and is used is a variety of applications including mathematics, electronics and yes, the Internet.

On the Internet, we use it to combine key words to narrow or broaden the results of our search. It allows for more accurate searches by incorporating the use of AND, OR, and NOT.

• AND limits your search by requiring all words be present (not necessarily together)
• OR expands the search, not requiring all words to be present
• NOT limits your search by eliminating words

Using AND or AND NOT will usually make your search result smaller; using OR will usually make it larger. Notice that these are type in Capital letters.

Another useful search technique involves the usage of quotation marks to narrow in on our target by looking for the exact words together in the exact order. This searches for exact multiple-word phrases. Without quotation marks, the search engine may assume that the phrase is a list of separate terms. "Jail House Rock", for instance, will return a list of pages containing that exact phrase. In contrast, jail house rock (without quotes) returns pages containing the words: jail, house, and rock, not necessarily in that order.

Let's study an example of each. I'm looking for WebPages on Mickey Mouse. Here are the results of the following examples typed in my Search.

"Mickey Mouse" 8,900 hits
Mickey and Mouse 349,000 hits
Mickey AND Mouse 9,270 hits
Mickeymouse 65 hits

If I was looking for Mickey unrelated to Mouse, I could type in Mickey NOT Mouse. My search netted 45,100 hits and included Baseball memorabilia, Mickey's Art and Crafts and a recruitment superstar. NOT is the least used of all the Boolean Operators.

Be care of your search engine provider on the Internet also. Not all search engines are alike and not all search engines support Boolean Logic. I like www.google.com, however, there are many, many excellent search engines on the Web. There's even a web site to rate and explain them for you … www.searchenginewatch.com.

Finally, be aware that many common words and characters, known as stop words are ignored. Many sites automatically disregard such terms as "where" and "how," as well as certain single digits and single letters, because these terms slow down searching significantly and rarely help narrow a search.