Ultimate Tips for Web Searching in Less Time
reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center

Most of us use search engines every day, but few know how to make the most of those searches. Given the enormous amount of information on the Internet, almost any search you do will yield thousands, or even millions of results. But if they aren't the right results, they don't do you any good. And who has time to spend trawling through loads of "sort of useful" information?

Fortunately, there are a few tricks to help you better focus your searches so you get the information you need in less time. Here are five search engine best practices to try next time you need to search.

1. Use quotes to find a specific phrase
In order to find an entire phrase in a search, enter quotation marks (" ") around the terms. For example, the search query butter apples orange will yield results containing any mention of those words, whereas "butter apples orange" returns only results where those words appear together and in that order in either the title, the URL of the website or the keywords in the document.

2. Use + or – for more targeted word searches
Adding the plus sign (+) or the word AND before a word will require that it be found in all of the search results. Conversely, the minus sign (–) before a word, or the word NOT, requires that it not be found in the search results.

3. Describe what you need with as few terms as possible
Generally, the more words you use in a search query, the more results you'll get. But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily get more useful results. So starting with fewer words helps you keep your searches focused. And even if you don't find what you need, the results will likely give you a good idea of what additional words are needed to refine your results on the next search.

4. Use search engine advanced search options
Many search engines give you the option to do an Advanced Search. You can filter results by date, language or other criteria. Advanced searching also makes the process of searching for specific words (as described above) fast and easy. You can even do site-specific searches.

5. Skip searching and sign up for alerts
If you find yourself frequently searching the same terms to find new information, you can save time by signing up for alerts. For example, if you frequently search for news of your favorite sports team, Google Alerts will send you daily, weekly, or "as it happens" e-mail updates. Another option: Microsoft's new search engine Bing offers RSS feeds for its web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader. Just add "&format=rss" (without the quotes) to any Bing search URL to convert it into a feed.

In addition to these tips, it's a good idea to explore the features and functionality of different search engines to see which one is right for your needs and fits your preferences. Apart from the well-known Google, there's Bing, Ask, and Dogpile, just to name a few. Happy searching!