Simon Goudie
Using multiple search engines
As each search engine uses a different algorithm to process and prioritise your results, you will find that each one will present a different set of results. Rather than one being necessarily ‘better’ than the others, using these in combination will let you find a lot more information than you would using one exclusively…
Yahoo!ing
Within pretty much any industry, there is competition and web searching is no different. While Google has become a byword for searching these days and owns a clear majority of the search traffic, there are still worthy competitors. The most notable of these is Yahoo!…
Quicksearch in Firefox
If you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can quickly search the web using the box in the top-right corner of the browser. Click on the icon to the left of the box to easily switch between search engines. Some of the defaults include Google, Yahoo! and Amazon. You can even add your own if you [...]
Using Google to answer simple questions
As well as being a great search engine, Google can also answer some basic questions you might have without having to visit a different site. Google will automatically pick up many simple queries and attempt to answer them. In most cases, the results if you were to search for the query appear below the answer as well, just like a normal search. You may have noticed this when searching for basic information, but have you tried it for definitions or phone numbers? Keep reading for some more examples of how Google can quickly help you out…
Shortcuts
In most Windows programs, you can jump to the search function by pressing F3 or Ctrl-F. Once you have run your search, F3 or ‘Find Next’ will continue to cycle through the document looking for the search term.
Refining search results using quotes, plus and minus
The number of results returned by a search engine can be truly immense, with most common searches giving hundreds of thousands of options to choose from, if not millions. Some of these results are relevant, some less so and some completely off target. To improve the relevance of your results, it helps to be a bit more specific with your query. Using quote marks, plus signs and minus signs are a good way to do this…
Web searching 101
The internet is a big place, with millions of users and billions of webpages. This makes it the world’s greatest source of information on almost every topic, but it also means that it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for…
