By Ameh Angelina Omega-U14MM2001
Ever since web 2.0 was lunched in the 2000s, internet searching becomes more imperative for research of all kinds. This makes it possible for many internet users to produce contents and share them online for people to access. Because of this, Google and other search engines become more resourceful in obtaining relevant information across millions of domains in the world.
Sometime, gathering the right and desired information can be frustrating, rigorous and daunting. This is due to the facts that the internet contains billions of information. This means that part of your single search might present thousands of results.
To this end, many people surfing the internet today might give up their search without obtaining the information they are actually looking for. As such, I have compiled 10 useful tricks and techniques of internet search to help you narrow down your search and obtain the best results the next time you are browsing and you will be glad you did. There are as follows:
1.Know exactly what you are looking for: internet contains billions of web domains therefore the starting point to get best search result is to determine what to search for and what you are not looking for. After that, analyze and identify key words for search query and finally lunch your browser and ask google for the right information.
2. Avoid using definite and indefinite articles: words such as THE, A, and AN are not contributing anything to your search request. The only exception is when there are part of document tittle.
3. Use “AND”, “OR” for your search expression: this is another search operator that can give you fruitful results in your quest for knowledge on the web. Sometimes we are not too sure of the words that can produce best results for our search and so we use “AND”, “OR” to command search engines to bow to our request. One way to do this is by putting “AND”, “OR” in between the words you are searching for. Example: graphic designer AND OR animation will return documents that contain either graphic designer or animation or both together.
4. Use quotation marks (“ “): the quotation marks are powerful search commands that break the rules of “garbage in, garbage out”. In the search operation, you can use it when your search is in phrase. It must be very specific and must be opened with and closed with the quotation marks. Example: “Nigeria governors”. This will take you directly to the web pages that contain Nigerian governors, their phone numbers and any other relevant information about them.
5. Use URL/Tittle: URL is uniform resources locator. It is a web resources that specify the present location of documents on the web. This technique is used when you are sure that the document is locating in a particular url, then you can query inurl: example: inurl:football. This will give only pages that have football in the url of the page.
6. Use asterisk or wildcard operator (*): this trick is helpful when there is a term or fact you are not sure of. It is very effective because google has artificial intelligent robots that will guess what you are looking for and present other search results that are similar to or almost the same with what you are looking for. Example: mass*communication will brings you results of mass communication jobs, studies, colleges, syllabus etc.
7. Use a particular site: several times we read important articles or item on a particular web site and we forget to save it and maybe need it in the future when it uses becomes imminent, only to discover that we cannot even locate it. This can be very painful. However, you can get it back by using search within the site technique. Example: assuming you read about ebola vaccine on BBC website and wish to go back to it again, use search expression like this: ebola vaccine site:
bbc.co.uk.
8. Use a plus sign (+) to add words in the search: sometimes there are wanted information which might be valuable but you don’t actually know what to type as in addition. Therefore use the plus sign as remedy. Example: Africa+ culture will return very good information for you on African cultures.
9. Look for information from credible sources: internet is a platform that contents are uploaded at free will. Therefore, be careful of how you trust information you get for your search. You can evaluate the credibility of a source by authorship, URL of the documents etc. the most credible information come from websites with .gov; .org; .edu; .journals while .com are purely commercial and can be biased in giving information.
10. Create a Google mail account: the significant of doing this is to enable flexibility of connectivity between your devices, browsers and your search engine. And finally type “help” whenever you encounter problems surfing the internet. Read more here
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