Having used search engines since 1995, I can say from experience that the advance in technology has been tremendous, both in terms of search engine technology, and of course the sheer volume of content that has been published over the last 15 years online.
I've changed as a "searcher," and now find myself near a real sweet spot - I can find almost anything I want. If it's online, I'm pretty confident I can find it, and more to the point, find it quickly.
The other changed I've noticed is that I hardly ever go to a specific site to search of locate content on it - Google does a far better job. The simple addition of "site:www.whateveritis.com " before your query will locate the item on the site in question far quicker for two reasons - Google's search servers have insanely high availability/performance and most importantly, Google knows more about your site's content than you do.
With an increasing reliance on Google, it's important for me to learn the best ways to use it - to get results quickly, and filter out noise. Here are 7 techniques I use all the time...
1. Think like a publisher
When you get stuck with searches, try to think like a blogger or publisher, and pretend you are going to write an article that satisfies the query in mind. What words would you use? what phrases and background information might be attached to the information? As you do this, you'll hopefully think or other search terms to try that could lead to the information you are after.
2. Pretend you've already asked the question
Another classic way to get results is to type the question directly into google, without quotes. For example, if you were trying to find honest reviews of a product (typical query: "[product name] reviews"), you could see if there were any forums talking about the product, usually starting with a member asking a question such as:
- Does anyone have/own a [product name]?
- Has anyone bought a [product name]?
- What is [product name] like?
- What are your thoughts on [product name]?
With a few more variations, you'll hopefully find a blog post or forum thread which is rich in conversation about the product. This works even better for more technical questions, e.g.
3. Focus on the most important words first
Ideally, your search should start with one or two pretty specific words that are at the heart of the query, and then add further slightly less specific words depending on what come back. For instance, say I wanted to find out about whether I could add my blog's RSS feed to my Facebook news feed. I'll start with:
RSS Facebook "News Feed"
Results are all relevant, but their about consuming the newsfeed as RSS. Let's try -
RSS Facebook "News Feed" add
Not much better, but a lot about FriendFeed. I'm going to remove FriendFeed and add Blog -
RSS Facebook "News Feed" add -friendfeed blog
Still not much better, but on page two I see the magic words: "... syndicate on your Notes... " At this point, I'm changing my query completely to:
Facebook blog notes syndicate
And at this point, virtually all the results are about importing your blog to Notes within Facebook, which will show up in the newsfeed - the result I wanted.
4. The Expand / Contract method
This is a pretty basic but powerful technique. Following on from focusing on key words (3), incrementally add more and more words or phrases to the search to filter the list down. As the results filter down, take off ones that are bringing more irrelevant results, or change too-specific words to variants that may yield broader results.
5. Research alternative vocabularies
There's always a possibility that the keywords you are using to search for something may differ from those used in online communities. This isn't just misspellings, which Google is getting better at handling, but people referring to the exact same things with completely different words, for example "Website Management" might mean "Content Management," "Plasma" might mean "High Def" and "Code Library" might mean "Framework"
The quickest route around this is to visit forums around the subject matter and observe the lingua franca. An even quicker method is WikiPedia, which may expand on terminology and suggest new keywords that may be valid.
6. Learn Advanced Operators
Google offer a range of advanced operators to instruct it's search algorithm to do more specific searches, including only searching certain sites, searching link text and more. These are invaluable and worth printing out - you can read about these on Google here -
Google Advanced Search Operators
7. Use "Quotes" liberally
I rarely do a search without quotes involved. If two words logically go together - quote them. If they don't, avoid them, but it's illogical to let Google throw back thousands of results when you can guide it much more explicitly with what you want. There are some unobvious exceptions to this if you're not getting results. "Barack Obama" is a good example - there will be as many references with just "Obama" as well as his full name. "Content Management" is a logical example of something that should always be in quotes.
Take your searches to the next level
Getting more from your searches in less time isn't rocket science - it's essentially just using a little creativity and persistence when searching.
If you've got any stunning tips on searching, please share them below ...