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Copyright 2003 by amint.com
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When conducting a search for information about any given subject online, or finding products and services related to a particular subject or industry, you have three basic options of Web search tools that you can use to perform searches for the specific information you need. These three options include: search engines, search agents and hand-built directories. All three options have their specific uses.

Search engines, the best of the best of which is Google, run a program called a spider, crawler, trawler, robot, worm or wanderer, that constantly combs the Internet grabbing and recording page content information. These search engine spiders chase down every link on every website they come across, which leads them to new sites. They crawl across the content of each site to log the page contents of every page they find into their massive databases. Just what do we mean by the term massive? Well, Google for example, has over 10,000 Linux servers that track billions of web pages on websites around the world.

In general, the fastest way to find specific information about anything on the Internet, or World Wide Web, is to use a search engine. Search engine pages look similar to normal Web pages, with a form to enter the search terms into a database and returns a list of results or "hits." More than likely you used one before arriving at our site.

Depending on the search engine you like to use, the search listing results should include enough information for you to judge whether the pages it found for you will be useful. However, each search engine can return only its spider’s most recent findings. How often a spider combs and records content to a given site depends on many factors, including whether or not the site is very active, whether it has a history or regularly updating content, etc.

Add to this the fact that the various search engines source, store and retrieve their data differently and you end up with very different results on searches performed with different engines. Generally, it is always best to start with the best. So when you go to perform a web search we recommend that you choose one with large and very fresh databases that offer you the ability to fine tune your search with extra commands and return the most relevant hits first. Search engines considered to be very large include Google, MSN, HotBot, AltaVista and Northern Light.

We love and highly recommend Google. And if you know anything about search engines you more than likely already know that Google not only performs the lion share of daily searches for online users, but their technology and systems are used by other famous search spots on the Internet like AOL Search, for example.

It would be a laborious process to provide instructions for each particular search engine online, thus to minimize rhetoric and get you up to speed and performing very accurate and intelligent searches quickly, we will confine our list of instructions to those needed to become an expert at searching Google.

For now, we will assume that you already know the minimal knowledge required for perform a search on a given engine. Namely, you just visit the url address of the home page for the major search engine you wish to use, type a search term or phrase (i.e., descriptive text) into the engine’s search query box, and hit the "Enter" key or click a "Search" button. This simple and very basic knowledge is about the same for every engine you will use.

Our goal in providing our extensive list of search instructions is to teach you ways to minimize the time it takes you to perform successful searches and find exactly what you are looking for online. Many people believe that because they can’t find what they’re looking for online is because "it must not exist." Others, feel that they can’t find the info they are looking for because the engine they are using is bad. However, the age-old computer adage of "garbage in - garbage out" is very applicable to search engine usage. To perform successful searches in record time requires knowledge of a given search engine’s special functions and practice on using them correctly.

Some basic tips for choosing the right keywords for your search are listed below:

1. Look before you leap - i.e., select your keywords wisely.
2. When in doubt as to what search term to use, think logical. For example, if you are looking for information on Ronald Regan, the 39^th President of the United States, instead of Ronald Regan during his earlier years as an actor, enter the search terms "Ronald Regan President" or "Ronald Regan 39^th President" or "39^th President of the United States" and not the search terms "President", "U.S. Presidents", or "Regan."
3. When you can’t find what you’re looking for with a keyword search, try using words that you think might appear on a website that contains the information you need. For example, if you’re looking for nice places to stay and fish in Texas you would get better search results searching for "Texas fishing resorts" than you would get for "Texas fishing" or "super places to stay and fish in Texas."
4. Use very specific keywords for specific information. For example, if you are looking for "Barbra Streisand Hybrid Tea Roses" then search on that exact term. You’ll get far better results than searching for "roses," "Hybrid Tea roses," or "Barbra Streisand."

What you may not know about Google is that it ignores common words like "where" and "how" in a search term or string, and it automatically includes the word "and" by default between words in your search term. Thus, this is why Google returns search results for pages that contain all the words in your search term. Stated more precisely, a search for the term "Charles Bronson movies" will return results for pages that contain all three words (Charles, Bronson and movies) in the page, but not necessarily in consecutive order.

It is important to note that the order in which you place terms in a search will affect the outcome of the search results. Thus, a search for "Charles Movies Bronson" will produce different results than "Charles Bronson Movies.

Not to worry if you’re one of those creatures that is too lazy to turn their "all-caps" button off. Google doesn’t care if your search for "Miami Beach Resorts" is written in lowercase (i.e., miami beach resort), all uppercase (i.e., MIAMI BEACH RESORT) or a mixture (i.e., MiAmI bEaCh ReSoRt).

Although you may use the * key to signify a wildcard function to perform searches on your Windows based PC, Google wants to return very accurate search results and does not recognize any wildcard search functions. Thus, a search for "barber*" will not return "barbers," "barbershops," or "barberspole."

will produce totally different results than what you would achieve searching for "video" under,

Another way to further enhance and increase the accuracy of your searches on Google is to use Google's special operators regularly. There are several other very important operators you can use when performing Google searches that will make your searches much more accurate.

When we use the term "operator" we are referring to special words or symbols you can add to your search phrases that will refine your searches. Think of them as query words that Google has reserved and predefined for fulfilling searches in a given manner.

Have you ever used a "+" sign to assist in a keyword phrase search? If not, you’ll soon be putting it to good use. You use it when a common word is very essential to your search results output. For example, if you want to find pages that specifically address the 35^th President of the United States, a simple search string of, 35^th + President, will produce the results you’re expecting. Make sure you always insert a space before and after the + sign.

You can also accomplish the similar results using quotation marks before and end of a search phrase. Thus, a search for

will produce the same results as a search for

For example, to find web pages about pig that do not contain the word "pipeline", type the following search term into Google’s search box:

In the event you wish to search for a word and all its synonyms simply place the tilde sign, or ~ symbol before your search word.

For example, let’s say you wanted to search for the term "flower" and its synonyms, you could perform a search using the input:

and you would see pages that contained the word flowers, along with pages that also contain the words blossoms, bouquet and corsage.

You can perform a search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. Words enclosed inside double quotes or quotation marks as they are often called, will result in Google finding web pages that contain the phrase of words in the exact word string that you typed them into the search box. Thus, a search for:

will only return a list of pages that contain the words in your search phrase in the exact order you typed them inside quotes.

If you want to find web pages that contain one word or another, say pages that contain either the words "aerosol paint" or "spray paint," simply type the words putting the "OR" operator between them.

Example: To perform a search using the "or" operator type the following into Google’s search box and press the enter key.

Another example would be:

I bet you didn’t know that you can search a single domain for a keyword or phrase using Google. You perform a single domain search by typing in your search term, followed by the word "site" and a colon, then followed by the domain name. This really comes in handy. How many times have you visited a website and knew the company had to offer certain content on its site but you could never locate it through their menu structure? Your problems have been solved using the "site" operator on Google.

Let’s say you were interested in going to Yale University and wanted to know more about the fraternities that have a presence at Yale. You could find all web pages on Yale’s site at Yale.edu that contain the word fraternities by typing the following into a Google search box:

Then press the enter key. (Note there is no space between site: and yale, but there is a space between the search word and the modifier "site:"

1. Number of search results displayed per page.
2. The language your Google user interface is displayed in.
3. Choose whether or not to employ Google’s SafeSearch filtering technology to filter out porn from search results and images.
4. Restrict search results to display only sites written in a certain language.
5. Display results in a new search window.
6. Convert sites in Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese to English.

All of these great features or editable and can be modified through your Google search preference page.

This functionality is also available through Advanced Search page, under Advanced Web Search > Domains.

Looking for a search phrase and want to narrow your search down to only those web pages on the Internet that contain your keyword phase in their page titles. No problem, just type the query modifier allintitle: and then your search phrase. Google will return a list of pages that contain your keyword phrase in their page titles.

For example: If you want to find all pages indexed by Google that contain the words "handmade Christmas ornaments" in the title, just enter the following into the Google search box:

For example, to find web pages that contain the word "gas" somewhere in their page titles and the word "grills" anywhere on the same page, employ the use of the intitle modifier as follows:

Note, there is no space between intitle: and the word gas.

The allinurl modifier works just like the allintitle modifier, except you use it to find all websites that contain every word of your search phrase in their url address. Thus, a search for:

If you wish to find a specific search term in url addresses and desire only finding those url’s that contain your search words in the exact order you desire, be sure and add quotation marks " at the beginning and ending of the search phrase.

Note that the allinurl modifier ignores all punctuation marks in your search term or phrase.

To find sites that contain a specific word in their url address just type the following into the Google search box if, for example, the word you are interested in is "flowers."

Note, there is no space between the modifier and colon inurl: and the search word.

Now let’s say you want to find all sites that contain the word flowers in their url address and the word roses on any part of their pages. For this type of search you would enter the following search phrase into Google’s search box:

This completes our tutorial on how to perform expert searches for keywords and phrases using Google. Some handy url addresses we can recommend on Google.com follow below: