Different search engines work in different ways. Some will look for individual words, others search for all the words you enter. Sometimes you can help the search engine along by telling it how to search. Here are a few tips that will work on most search engines. If you just enter a simple word like 'Internet,' you'll probably get millions of results. In order to find exactly what you're looking for, you need to add more words to narrow it down. Typing a phrase in quotation marks will look only for those words together. So putting 'search engine' in quotes will only bring up those pages that contain the entire phrase. Otherwise, you'd get back all the pages that contain the word 'search,' as well as those that contain 'engine.' Another good way to narrow down your results is to use what are called Boolean operators. This is a computer term meaning 'and' or 'not.' If there are two words that you definitely want to have in the document, put a plus sign in front of them. If there's a word that you don't want in your search results, put a minus sign in front of it. To get the best results from any search engine, go to that engine's home page and, if it gives you the option, click on the link to go to the advanced or optional search features. Since each one works differently, you should spend a few minutes learning just how to tune that particular engine for optimum performance.
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