Searching the Internet

Searching the Internet and its vast amount of information can be as frustrating as it is rewarding. In the beginning, boolean searching was the way to find things on the Internet. Like everything else, however, search engines are much more sophisticated today, and it’s not worth the effort to learn boolean search techniques. All you need to know for improving your search results is niche searching. You may already be familiar with the word “niche” since one definition is a recess in a wall, and it has been used in construction for years. A second definition is “something for which a person or thing is best fitted.”

You want to find something on the Internet, and you want the best fit for your search.

Narrow Your Search

This morning I searched Google, the largest search engine as of today, for the word “Arkansas.” The results came back showing results 1 – 10 of about 18,700,000. Do you have time to look at all eighteen million Arkansas listings to find what you’re looking for? No, I didn’t think so.

Use the plus symbol to add a narrow search. Yes, that sounds strange. All our lives we’ve been taught that the + symbol means add and that adding something means to make it bigger. In this case, you are making your search command bigger, which will result in fewer listings.

The + symbol tells the search engine to FIND ALL THE WORDS. For example, let’s add Little Rock to our Arkansas search.

arkansas + little rock

Our search now shows only pages that contain both words, and Google now shows results 1 – 10 of about 4,050,000. In other words, using the + symbol reduced the results from 18 million to 4 million. So let’s add more.

arkansas + little rock + historic places

Our search results dropped from four million to 64,300 (and I got really excited because one of our sites, www.onlinelittlerock.com, was listed number 1). However, let’s narrow the search even further by adding the word cemetery.

arkansas + little rock + historic places + cemetery

That dropped the results to 14,300. You see, the + symbol is a rather easy way to limit the amount of information you receive from the search engine.

When Subtraction Really Means Subtraction

But let’s say you are interested in finding historic places in Little Rock, Arkansas that ARE NOT cemeteries. You can remove cemetery listings by using the minus symbol in front of the word cemetery.

arkansas + little rock + historic places -cemetery

Removing the word cemetery from the search reduced the results by 100 to 14,200. Let’s go back and find pages about Arkansas that do not include Little Rock.

arkansas -little rock

Earlier when we searched for pages about Arkansas that included Little Rock, we got over 4 million possibilities. By telling the search engine to remove Little Rock from the results, we get 948,000 pages.

This is What I Want to See

Tell the search engine exactly what you want by using quotation marks. Quotation “marks” command the search engine to FIND THESE WORDS USED TOGETHER. Try it. Let’s search for Little Rock entertainment.

“little rock entertainment”

Google says there are 2,650 pages containing the phrase “little rock entertainment”. Prove it to yourself by searching for little rock +entertainment. Instead of quotations telling the search engine to find that exact phrase, search for pages containing the words little rock and entertainment. Google tells me there are 3,320,000. See what the quotation marks did.

Combine Symbols to Really Narrow Your Search

Let’s look for entertainment in Little Rock that does NOT include nightclubs.

"little rock entertainment" -night club

Google returned 29 pages, a far cry from the 18 million we first discovered. You do have time to peruse 29 pages, don’t you?

Computer Tips from Online Little Rock

Searching the Internet