Creating+Good+Search+Phrases

Kindergardeners can type a search into Google. But you should be able to search the web better than a kindergardener.

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A good search begins with a good search phrase (or what is sometimes called a "search chain"). To create a good search phrase, here are some tips:

1. **Type fewer words, not more** When you type in lots of words, Google searches for pages that have all of the words, not just a few of them. If you can limit your search phrase to a few words, you'll get better results.

Bad: Distance between the surface of the earth and the surface of the moon Better: Distance Earth to moon

Also: avoid phrasing your search as a question. Doing so adds extra search terms that will negatively effect your search results.

Picking the right search terms is something of an art. For example, should you search for information about taking a picture of your computer screen using "screen shot" or "screenshot"? [Yes, you'll get different results depending on what you enter.]

Here's a cool tool to decide between two terms: www.googlefight.com. This site shows you which of two terms gets you more hits. Kinda neat.

2. **Use special characters to control your search**

a. Quotation marks--a search for **french toast** will yield you a list of pages where the word "french" and the word "toast" appear somewhere on the page. But you don't want information about plain old toast. If you surround the search term with quotation marks--"french toast"--you'll only get results where the two words appear next to each other. This will make for a much better breakfast.

b. A plus sign (+)--similar to quotation marks. It tells Google, "You MUST find the term I've plussed in the search." Key: for this to work, you must NOT put any spaces between the plus sign (+) and the terms you're insisting that Google add. So, **french +toast**

c. A minus sign (-)--let's say you want to find out about dolphins but don't want results about the football team, the Miami Dolphins. Enter the search this way: **Dolphins -football** This tells Google, "Give me all the results about "dolphins" but omit all the ones that also have the term "football" in them.

d. A tilde sign (~) -- Looking for a used car but low on cash? Do you use the search term "cheap" or "inexpensive" or "bargain" or "close-out" or "no-frills" or "bottom of the line"? Rather than having to enter all of these terms, use the tilde to tell Google, "search for synonyms of my search term, too." So, **car ~cheap** will do the trick.

e. Double dots (..) --Google uses this to mean "in between." So, **car $750..$1000** will search for this price range; similarly, **"World Series" 1983..1985** will get you results about the series between these two dates.