1.4 Search tips

Unless your search is very simple, always use the ‘advanced search’ option provided by the search engine. This is normally a link near to the search box on the home page. ‘Advanced search’ allows you to do things like:

• Find results with all of the words you type in your query. This makes it much more likely to find relevant sites and to cut down on the number of results;
  
  
• Find results with the exact phrase, by putting the words in quote marks "...". This is very useful when looking for names of diseases, organisations, people;
  
  
• Choose the language, for example, English.

The Help pages will give you details about how to use the search engine and how to search more efficiently.

If you use only one or two search engines then time spent in reading their Help pages will be well worth it.

When using other search tools like gateways and directories, look at their Help pages too.

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© Copyright for this site is held by Contact a Family and the Information Society Research and Consultancy Group, School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences, Northumbria University. Site published February 2003. Last updated October 2006. Review date October 2007.