Revving Up Your Search Engine Skills

A search engine on the Internet is like a directory assistance operator on the phone. Just ask for information, and you'll get whatever is "in the system." The biggest mistake people make when they use search engines is making the scope of the search too broad. If you search for a word or phrase that's too general, you'll end up wading through hundreds of sites you don't even need. Here's what you've got to know to get the most out of a search engine: The plus sign and the minus sign. In almost all search engines, you can require that the pages in your search results contain a specific word by placing a plus sign (+) in front of the word. On the other hand, placing a minus sign (-) in front of a word means the pages in the search results must NOT contain that word.

For instance, suppose you want to find out what kinds of racquetball racquets are for sale via the Internet. if you search the Web for the word racquetball, your results will include thousands of home pages of people who listed racquetball as one of their hobbies. However, if you search for racquetball +sale, you'll get smaller set of links, because the +sale tells the search engine that the word "sale" must appear in the pages the engine lists in the results.

Check out our searchable tips database in the The TipZone.