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Search engines - those sites that allegedly help you find what you want online - can cause no end of grief if you don't know some simple tricks that will vastly improve your search results.
Suppose you wanted to find information regarding 1954 Ford truck parts. Most people would search this subject by going to their favorite search engine and typing in 1954 Ford truck parts. The search engine would hopefully return results for sites that matched those keywords.
However, search engines usually also return results including sites containing only some of the words in your search. So in this example you would also get sites not only about 1954 Ford truck parts, but on 1954 Fords, Ford trucks, truck parts, and trucks.
Virtually everyone knows the frustration of typing keywords (the topic of your search) into a search engine, clicking the search button, and then facing the prospect of sorting through a million pages (literally) to find what you want.
For everyone experiencing search engine frustration, these suggestions should quickly improve your results.
Tip 1 - To aid you in searching more efficiently, most search engines allow surfers to perform "Boolean" searches.
This feature narrows the results to only those websites containing all the words specified, but not necessarily in the exact order.
Those searching for 1954 Ford truck parts would enter 1954 AND Ford AND truck AND parts into the search box to find sites containing all of those words.
Tip 2 - Using quotation marks around keyword sets yields even more specific results.
"1954 Ford truck parts" should produce only those websites containing this exact phrase somewhere in the website.
Tip 3 - The more specific you get right up front, the better.
If you want to look for antique car parts for your 1954 Ford truck, start your search with "1954 Ford truck parts" and work from there.
Don't start with "1954 Ford" because you'll probably just waste time sorting through everything from cars to magazines to collector clubs.
It would also help if you searched by the model and any other specific information.
If refining your searches doesn't get you where you want to go, several programs exist to help you search more quickly and effectively.
Copernic (www.copernic.com) examines multiple search engines then compares each engine's results against the rest to determine the best sites.
The program then ranks the resulting sites and displays them for the user. Copernic's free version allows users unlimited searches for websites.
Web Ferret (www.ferretsoft.com) also offers a free program that queries multiple search engines and displays the ranked results in the user's web browser for easy surfing.
With the addition of millions of web pages every week, continuously honing your search skills represents one of the smartest investments of time and energy any serious web surfer can make.
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