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Search Tips: The Tricks of the Search Trade

Finding a good search engine is only half the battle. You also have to know how to use it. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your queries.

Read the instructions: Most search sites tell you how to get the best results using their engine, so read before you search.

Be specific but concise: Include sufficient search terms to get the links you want at the top of the list. Too many terms can push the page you want to the bottom, however. Start with a few terms, then add or replace them one at a time to get better results.

Go Boolean: The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT let you include or exclude pages based on their content. For example, searching for Sopwith AND Camel AND Snoopy yields only pages about the Peanuts character's escapades as a World War I flying ace; Sopwith AND Camel NOT Snoopy blocks out most Peanuts-related pages--provided the engine recognizes the NOT operator.

The Google advanced search page automatically includes the AND operator in its 'with all of the words' field, the NOT in the 'without the words' field, and the OR in the 'with any of the words' field.

Some search engines, such as AltaVista, Lycos, and Fast, replace AND and NOT with + and -, respectively. To find only pages that discuss both the Dalai Lama and Bill Clinton, for example, you'd type +Dalai +Clinton (with a space between Dalai and the second +). Search Engines Showdown's Search Engine Features Chart identifies the Boolean terms each engine supports.

Add quotation marks: To find pages that mention W.C. Fields but not water closets or farmland, put quotation marks around your search term: "W.C. Fields." This instructs the engine to treat multiple words as a single term.

Use field specifiers: Some search engines support field specifiers--keywords that tell the engine to perform specific kinds of searches. For example, typing site:pcworld.com limits the results to pages on PC World's site; link:microsoft.com will give you pages on sites that link to Microsoft's site. Using url:weasel will produce only sites that contain the word weasel in their Web addresses. To see which specifiers a particular engine supports, read the site's advanced-search instructions.