Tips for More Effective Searches | Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource

All the advanced operators aside, most people use Google in a very inefficient and often ineffective manner. If all you do is enter a few keywords and click the search button, you're one of those users who doesn't get as much out of Google as you could. Read on to learn how to make your searches more effective, and more efficient.

Use the Correct Methodology

Whether you're conducting a basic or an advanced Google search, there is a certain methodology you should employ. Follow the proper method and you'll get very targeted results; ignore this advice and you'll either get a ton of irrelevant results or a dearth of relevant ones.

While there are many different (and equally valid) approaches to web searching, I guarantee that this particular approach will generate excellent results. It's a six-step process that looks like this:

1.	Start by thinking about what you want to find. What words best describe the information or concept you're looking for? What alternative words might some use instead? Are there any words that can be excluded from your search to better define your query?
2.	Construct your query. Use as many keywords as you need, the more the better. If at all possible, try to refine your search with the appropriate search operatorsor, if your prefer, Advanced Search page.
3.	Click the Search button to perform the search.
4.	Evaluate the matches on the search results page. If the initial results are not to your liking, refine your query and search againor refine your search by altering switch to a more appropriate search site.
5.	Select those matching pages that you wish to view and begin clicking through to those pages.
6.	Save the information that best meets your needs.

In other words, it pays to think before you searchand to continue to refine your search after you obtain the initial results. The extra effort is slight, and well worth it.

Use the Right Keywords in Your Query

When you construct your query, you do so by using one or more keywords. The keywords you enter are compared to Google's index of web documents; the more keywords found on a web page, the better the match.

You should choose keywords that best describe the information you're looking forusing as many keywords as you need. Don't be afraid of using too many keywords; in fact, using too few keywords is a common fault of many novice searchers. The more words you use, the better idea Google has of what you're looking for. Think of it as describing something to a friendthe more descriptive you are (that is, the more words you use), the better the picture your friend has of what you're talking about.

Note

The individual words that you enter into a search box are called keywords. Collectively, all your keywords (and the operators between the words) combine to form a query. Just remember that a query is composed of keywords, not the other way around, and you'll have it straight.

It's the same way when you "talk" to the Google search engine.

Tip

It's possible to include too many keywords in your query. Google searches only the first 32 words of your query, so anything more than that is just wasted. Enter a 33-word query (such as she wore yellow polka dot bikini drove little red corvette around dead man's curve going surfing usa frankie annette muscle beach party southern california hot rod endless summer wipeout tan lotion sand castle), and that 33rd word ("castle," if you're counting) won't be included in the actual search.

If you're looking for a thing or a place, choose keywords that describe that thing or place in as much detail as possible. For example, if you're looking for a car, one of your first keywords would, of course, be car. But you probably know what general type of car you're looking forlet's say that it's a sports carso you might enhance your query to read sports car. You may even know that you want to find a foreign sports car, so you change your query to read foreign sports car. And if you're looking for a classic model, your query could be expanded to classic foreign sports car. As you can see, the better your description (using more keywords), the better Google can "understand" what you're searching for.

If you're looking for a concept or an idea, you should choose keywords that best help people understand that concept or idea. This often means using additional keywords that help to impart the meaning of the concept. Suppose you want to search for information about senior citizens; your initial query would be senior citizens. What other words could you use to describe the concept of senior citizens? How about words such as elderly, old, or retired? If these words help to describe your concept, add them to your searchlike this: senior citizens elderly old retired. Adding keywords like these results in more targeted searches and higher-quality results. (Additionally, you can use Google's ~ operator to include synonyms of any selected word, as discussed previously.)

While we're on the subject of keywords, try to limit your keywords to nouns only. That's because many verbs and conjunctions are ignored by Google as stop words, or are simply too common to be useful. The key thing to remember is that you're searching for specific things; name those things in your query.

Save Your Results

If you manage to execute a search that results in a perfect set of matches, you probably want to save your results so you can access them again in the future. If you use Internet Explorer as your web browser, you should save the first results page of your search as a Favorite. (Select Favorites, Add to Favorites.) If you use another browser, learn how to save the page as a bookmark. This way, you can click the bookmark or favorite and return to that ideal page of results, without the need to replicate the query from scratch.

Tip

Of course, using Google's standard web page search isn't the only way to find information online. Google also offers the editor-compiled Google Directory (discussed in Chapter 3, "Searching the Google Directory"), the picture-oriented Google Image Search (Chapter 24, "Searching Google Images"), the Usenet newsgroup Google Groups search (Chapter 28, "Using Google Groups"), the news headline Google News search (Chapter 29, "Using Google News"), the Froogle online shopping search (Chapter 16, "Searching for Bargains with Froogle and Google Catalogs"), and many, many more specialized search options. If one search doesn't find what you're looking for, you can always try another!