How do I get the best results for my Searching?

A search engine is what you use to look for information on the Internet. They work in different ways. For example, some only look at titles in the Web; some look at the whole article's content; some look at keywords and some look at all of the above.

This information is provided for you to get the best out of your searching. Happy surfing!

• You can use this search engine to find anything, anywhere.
• It is most effective when you use Boolean indicators such as AND, NOT, OR, WITH.
• You need to use "....." to find a phrase, for example, "water cycle"

• Because many companies provide links to Excite, it has a good success rate.
• One of its features is the alternate terms it gives you.
• If you are unsure of the exact term, enter an approximate and excite will offer you some more.
• To make an advanced search, you can link words using the + sign and the - sign. For example, if you want information on the Beatles but not John Lennon, you would type in McCartney+Starr-Lennon.
• When you get a hit, Excite will allow you to explore sideways by offering you more sites on a similar topic.

• This is a very fast engine.
• This search engine allows you to be very specific.
• You can narrow your search to a site, a domain (edu, net, gov, org, com) or a geographical location.

• This is unlike any other search engine.
• To look for a phrase use, commas: ,Merchant of Venice", AND Shakespeare.
• Put a hyphen between words you want to be next to one another: deaf-education AND bilingual.
• Use a comma between names such as Howard, John or the computer will look for all Howards.
• If you put a bracket around words, the computer will look for sites whcih use the words within 100 words of one another.

• This search engine has a spell checker in the advanced search which allows you to check for alternate spellings.
• It uses only AND and OR for searching and has problems when the title has numbers embedded in it.

• This is not really a search engine but a directory.
• It only searches for key words.
• It is best used when you select from one of their categories first.
• It allows you to bookmark the actual page for return later.
• It also links to other search engines effectively.

• This is a very fast tool.
• It allows you to search title, content and across newsgroups and Usenet.
• It can operate in a similar fashion to Excite.
• You can search using truncation, for example: you can enter libr+ and find information relating to library, libraries, librarian, libretto, etc.