You’d likely know by now that there is an amazing amount of information available on the Internet. You would probably also know by now that this is only great as long as you can sift through the mess and find what is valuable for you without wasting too much time.

To help make your searching quicker and more accurate, below are some effective search techniques to use next time you’re on your favourite search engine (this is Part 1, Part 2 will follow next month).

NB: These are generally considered common rules but do sometimes vary among search engines and other directory search systems. However, systems that vary from these conventions will generally offer a ‘help’ section or an ‘advanced search’ tool instead.

• AND
  Narrows your search to include documents that contain BOTH keywords:
  • sue AND wickenden

• OR
  Broadens your search to include ANY of the keywords:
  • Use in the situation where there are alternative spellings such as chi OR qi.
  • Use for common misspellings such as accommodation OR accomodation.

• NOT
  Narrows search by excluding one meaning of a word:
  • broncos BUT NOT brisbane
  • bass AND NOT fishing

• NESTING
  By combining Boolean words (AND, OR etc) with parenthesis, you can perform multiple tasks at once.
  • Commodore AND (car OR automobile) is useful for synonyms

• TRUNCATION
  Searches on the root of the word adding different word endings or plurals:
  • Educat* searches educator, education, educational, educated...
  • Some engines truncate automatically, so tribe may also retrieve tribes and tribal
  • Other engines recognise that the plural tribes should also retrieve the variants tribe and tribal.

• CONTROLS
  By adding + or - in front of a word you are saying that the word MUST or MUST NOT be included in the results of your search:
  • Indy - 2002 (information about the Indy carnival NOT discussing this year’s event)
  • Indy + 2002 (information about the Indy carnival ONLY discussing this year’s event)

Next month: Part 2 - Performing Precise Searches