Do you use search engines a lot during the course of your day, only to find yourself on a fruitless wild goose chase?
You can greatly improve your chances of success by learning the basics of the system used by many search engines. Here are some important features to know:
- The use of quotes can greatly increase your odds of finding your cyber-treasure. If you want to find out about the HR policies of Ben & Jerry’s, you’re not going to want lots of results about random people named Ben or Jerry. Try typing in “Ben & Jerry’s” in quotes or “Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.” It will eliminate results that show Ben and not Jerry, or results about Ben Franklin or Jerry Lewis.
- The use of the word AND can also help you. If you’re searching for info about Ben & Jerry’s and their HR policies, try typing in the following phrase: Ben & Jerry’s AND employees. You will get only references that include both the store and it’s employees, rather than just information about ice cream.
- Try using the phrase AND NOT to eliminate unwanted results. Toledo AND NOT Ohio would help you get results about Toledo, Spain.
SOURCE: Todd Raphael, Workforce Online, March 16, 1999.
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