10 Tips for Successful Search Engine Results
Author: Wes Waddell
Looking for quick information on the Web is next to impossible
these days... it can be like searching for that proverbial
needle in a haystack. With millions or even billions of Web
pages listed, finding the valuable information you desire just
isn't as easy as it used to be.
No need to worry... there are some simple things that you can do
to increase the odds of finding exactly what you need, quickly
and fast.
Follow these 10 tips that will work on almost any of the current
search engines to ease the pain of searches.
1. Use the advanced search link. Almost all search engines
have an "advanced search" page that provides you with more
options to really nail down exactly what you are looking for.
For example, you can search by an update date (when was the last
time a site changed), look for Web sites with a specific domain
like ".net," or find Web sites in a preferred language.
2. Search with a phrase of 3 words or more to better help the
search engine find what you're after. Give the engine a
sequence of words in a specific order, then place quotation
marks around the phrase. That way, it only finds results
that have that exact series of words.
Example: If you're looking for information on the Soft
Expressions Scrapbook Templates, type "soft expressions digital
scrapbook template" into the search window. If you forget the
quotations on each end, a search engine will likely look for Web
sites containing any of the words separately: digital, scrapbook,
expressions and soft in any order. Also, capital letters don't usually
matter in the current search engines, they'll find both upper
and lower case words.
3. Be specific! If general search terms like scrapbook
pages yield too many results, try more specific words such as
computer scrapbook templates, baby computer scrapbook kit, or
wedding scrapbook layouts on CD.
4. Use alternative search words. If your keywords (main
search terms) do not produce the results you want, try similar
words. If you don't find vacation pages, try travel or
holiday pages. After all, a child is also a baby, a kid, a teen,
a grade schooler, a rugrat, and a mothers pride and joy!
5. I use this next one a lot to make sure all my words are
considered when I can't use a specific phrase. I insert a
plus or minus sign in between my words. This trick usually
works in most search engines and really works well in Google.
All you do is put a plus sign (+) in front of a word that must
be found in the search window.
For example, "children's scrapbook" +boy will
help you narrow the search for scrapbook pages for little boys
only.
Similarly, you can place a minus sign (-) in front of a word
that you do not want to appear in the search results. I do
this a lot to eliminate people from things. Just by typing
in spears -brittney will allow you to come up with results
for something pointy and not the pop singer.
6. Want to use a search engine to just look through a particular
site that doesn't have a built in search function? If you
know the Web site that you want to search, but aren't sure where
the information is on the site... just tell your search engine
to only look for information on that domain. To do that,
you would enter what you're looking for in the search field,
followed by the word "site", a colon, and then the domain name.
Here's what it looks like. If I want to find Wedding
wedding scrapbook
information for our website, I would just enter
this: Wedding templates site:www.princesscrafts.com.
7. This one is kind of a last resort, but for some of the more
common items that render hundreds/thousands of results, this can
significantly reduce the numbers and provide some quality
control. Just be prepared for lots
of advertising and a few popups.
Explore "best of" sites (you can search for lists of them) if you're after quality and not quantity. Some of the smaller ones even provide access to hand-picked "Best of the Web" sites. One example with lots of ads is About.com. Great results, but you have to deal with scrolling ads and someone else's idea of what's most important.
On the other hand, sites like:
http://www.besthistorysites.net have no ads and some really
great content for history buffs and those of us looking for what
was happening if the world when we were born or other such
journaling content for our heritage scrapbook pages.
8. Tired of half your results containing adult content and other
inappropriate links? There's a way to get rid of most of
those sites before you have the chance to stumble upon them.
To stop the majority of inappropriate content sites
from being included in your search results, MSN (in their Search's settings)
and Google (in the advanced search page) allow you to activate SafeSearch. While not
totally perfect, these functions will
eliminate a large proportion of sites that contain explicit sexual content
and subject matter from ever showing up in your
search results.
9. Use Specialize Search Engine programs. What I mean is
that both MSN and Google have special programs set aside that
list only information of a particular type. If you look at
some of the options in the advanced search functions and in the
"More" area of Google, you can dedicate the tool to finding just
images (great for layout ideas or clipart hunts).
There are lots of different specialized search
engines. MSN Search, for example, has MSN Image, MSN Shopping
for shopping-related Web sites and even MSN News for published
news articles from around the world. Google has it's own
Image search, news, shopping (Froogle) and even one for finding
video and audio content (multimedia). Need more ideas... check
out Search Engine Watch for all the latest in specialized tools
and searches.
10. I saved this one for last, not because it makes my results
any better, but because this one saves me tons of time.
What is it? It's the search toolbar. A browser add
on program that you download and it places a custom toolbar at
the top of your browser with lots of search tools right at my
fingertips.
If you do a lot of searching
on the Web, these FREE toolbars are an absolute must have.
I personally recommend the Bing toolbar and use it on all our
systems here at PrincessCrafts. It has by far the best set of
built in tools, including popup blocker, spell checker search
window and lots more... all customizable by you. The next
best one is probably free Google Search Toolbar, which may more
popular,
but gives a large advantage to it's largest advertisers and
national brands. Bing gives much better local and small business
results.
About the author:
Wes Waddell is the co-founder of
http://www.PrincessCrafts.com.
Visit
any of Kathy and Wes' digital scrapbook sites and learn how to
turn your pictures into treasured family heirlooms.
www.PrincessCrafts.com
- 1st and Largest Digital Scrapbook Membership Site
www.1-Computer-Scrapbook.com - Square Format Computer Scrapbook Memberships
www.FreeKidsRecipes.com - FREE Kids Recipes and matching Memory pages.
www.ComputerScrapbookTraining.com - FREE Computer Scrapbooking 101 Course using totally FREE Software.