Searching Smarter

If your search engine searches seem to yield you all sorts of subject matter except that which you are looking for, try using some of the techniques below to help refine your search:

When in doubt, use lowercase text in your searches – some search engines are case sensitive, so you’d be better off using lowercase.

For specific word orders or phrases, use quotation marks – the text in between two quotation marks will be searched for exactly as it appears. For example, “free weekly web marketing tips” will only yield results with that exact phrase in it.

Try searching by keyphrase instead of keywords alone – keyphrases are strings of two or more words that help hone in on what you’re looking for. For example, if you are looking for information on carriers of long-term disability insurance, don’t just type in “insurance agencies”; type in the whole specific phrase: “long-term disability insurance agencies.”

Including or excluding words — with multiple keywords or keyphrases, to make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the keyword in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Expand your search using wildcards (*) — by typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.

Boolean Commands/Operators – for more advanced searches, use the Boolean (search language) commands (always capitalized) AND(&), OR(|), AND NOT(!), or NEAR(~). These commands tell the search engine how to behave. For example, utilizing “AND” between two words tells the search engine that the search results must contain both words; “OR” means either or; “AND NOT” works similar the minus symbol mentioned above; “NEAR” finds documents containing both specified words or phrases within 10 words of each other.

For more help on simple and advanced searches, visit the easy-to-understand Help features at Alta Vista:

Alta Vista Introduction Search

Alta Vista Advanced Search

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