Internet Searching Tips

by Brenda Janson, LRC Coordinator, M.L.I.S., M.A.,
International Institute of the Americas, Mesa Learning Resource Center

Following is a quick guide to getting the most out of Internet search engines.  Because there are so many millions of pages on the Internet, the student usually needs to know how to narrow down a search so that the search engine will retrieve the sites wanted, instead of many irrelevant pages.

Many search engines use these symbols, words, etc., to narrow down a search:

"  "	(double quotes around phrases)	"business management"	searches the entire phrase instead of each word
+	(plus sign right in front of keyword)	+Austria  +"death row"	words or phrases with + must be in sites retrieved
-	(minus sign right in front of keyword)	+"death row" +women -men	indicates that you do not want sites retrieved that contain these words or phrases
AND	(between words)	"death row" AND women	means the same as the plus sign above
NOT	(between words)	"death row" NOT men	means the same as the minus sign above

Other Tips:

• Notice that all of the above can be combined to narrow your results even further.
• Lower case:  Generally, use lower case for all words, except proper nouns, such as White House, Bill Clinton, Congress.  If you use upper case, some search engines will search for the words only in upper case.
• * (asterisk):  The asterisk can be used in some search engines as a wild card; that means, you can substitute the asterisk symbol in place of a letter or letters you are not sure of in a word.  However, the number of letters it will replace varies, and some search engines do not use it at all.  Examples:  wom*n (can search for woman and women); state* (can retrieve sites with state and states)

Last modified: 2-3-2005.  2:00 p.m. BLJ.