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The
Alberta Premiere
Internet Co-operative Project
Search
Engine Made Simple Tutorial |
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The rules of thumb....
Use Canadian search engines for canada (.ca) for
best results
ie: msn.ca, yahoo.ca, google.ca, lycos.ca...
Who ~ What
~ Where
search who & where
or what and where
or what who & where
and search a phrase or part phrase when possible
in quotes "ABC".
Upper case or lower case doesn't matter in
most search engines
eg: Finding a glass shop in
Provost.
Your search term to type in would be;
Glass Provost
or glass shops provost
or glass repairs provost
or window repairs provost
or replacement windows
or replacement glass
or "windows provost alberta"
Try it as a phrase ( "in Quotes" ) if
the website has the words listed together
etc etc etc. (but no underline)
:>)
Keep it simple and think of the way you look
things up in the yellow pages.
Sometimes you might be looking for a title of a
movie or book
Type in the full name of the title in Quotations
as follows
(What) "The
Call Of The Wild" (Quotes are used to find a
specific Phrase or Title)
Want to find it in Alberta?
Then No quotes
The Call Of The Wild alberta
or "The call of the wild"
+ alberta
It's actually quite straight forward once you get
the hang of it.
Below are a series of basic search tips for most of the more popular
search engines.
Give it a try with the links above.
be prepared to sort through a bit of unrelated
links...
That unfortunately is sometimes just a part of the
web.
More Tips
"Knowledge is
of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon
it."
--Samuel Johnson,
1744 |
NOTE: These tips will work with most search engines
in their basic search option.
 | Use the plus (+) and minus (-) signs in front of words to force their inclusion
and/or exclusion in searches.
EXAMPLE: +meat -potatoes
(NO space between the sign and the keyword)
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| Use double quotation marks (" ") around phrases to ensure they are
searched exactly as is, with the words side by side in the same order.
EXAMPLE: "bye bye miss american pie"
(Do NOT put quotation marks around a single word.)
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| Put your most important keywords first in the string.
EXAMPLE: dog breed family pet choose
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| Type keywords and phrases in lower case to find both lower and upper case
versions. Typing capital letters will usually return only an exact match.
EXAMPLE: president retrieves both president and President
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| Use truncation (or stemming) and wildcards (e.g., *) to look for variations in
spelling and word form.
EXAMPLE: librar* returns library, libraries, librarian, etc.
EXAMPLE: : colo*r returns color (American spelling) and colour (British
spelling)
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| Combine phrases with keywords, using the double quotes and the plus (+) and/or
minus (-) signs.
EXAMPLE: +cowboys +"wild west" -football -dallas
(In this case, if you use a keyword with a +sign, you must put the +sign in front of the
phrase as well. When searching for a phrase alone, the +sign is not necessary.)
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| When searching within a document for the location of your keyword(s), use the
"find" command on that page.
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