NEXT: OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY
Operators Are Standing
By
Operators, Boolean and otherwise, are commands and/or symbols you can enter
along with your search terms to help the algorithm understand what you want.
You can make sure that results include a number of words, or do not include
certain words. This can be important for words like Lotus, which is a software
publisher, a flower, an auto manufacturer, and a yoga position -- not to mention
a rare and powerful card in the popular fantasy game "Magic."
Another good example
of how much trouble it can be to find exactly what you want is a simple search
for information about common species of bird - Baltimore orioles. Enter that
into a search engine and see how many results you get that are not focused
on the baseball team. By adding some words to our search and using operators,
we can try to work around these sports fans.
Common operators:
+ or AND (+Baltimore +orioles, or Baltimore AND orioles -- tells the search
engine you only want to see pages containing both terms. Note that Baltimore
+orioles is different, resulting in a list of pages with both terms at the
top of the list, but also including just 'baltimore' at the end. ) - or NOT
(Baltimore -oriole forces the search engine to return pages only including
the term Baltimore - but not pages that also include the word oriole) OR (Handy
when something has more than one common name, i.e., "hard disk OR drive"
Here are some proposed search strategies for bird watchers:
Baltimore orioles -baseball (results not good)
Baltimore orioles -baseball -sports -score (a little better)
Baltimore orioles birds (no better) Best tip? Omit the 's' from "orioles"
Baltimore oriole (BINGO! Great results!
While it stands to reason that ornithologists might frequently speak of a
single oriole, it's uncommon to hear a single Baltimore baseball player called
an oriole).
Phrase Searches
Using quotation marks
"like this" will force the search engine to return results where the words
between the quotes appear exactly as you've entered them. This is great for
song lyrics, and also searching for people's names ("first last").
More advanced techniques
Beyond these techniques
are more specialized tricks; some search engines offer more and/or different
features than others. For example, you might specify the language you prefer
your search be limited to, or you might only be interested in finding articles
posted within a certain amount of time. You can also limit your search to
one particular domain, or even specify which part of a web document you want
to search - such as in the title or url only.
Conclusion
Think of searching the net as a puzzle, or a riddle to be solved, and you'll
be fine. Practice makes perfect, and the search engine's algorithms are getting
better all the time at guessing what you want. I've been giving variations
of this advice to professionals for almost a decade, and every time I review
the information and try some new sample searches, I'm amazed at how much easier
it gets to find exactly what I'm looking for. Perhaps it's the algorithms,
or perhaps it's the benefit of practice -- either way -- the answer is out
there!
D.Scott Salveson
01/12/12
