Keywords and distinctive phrases: learn the patter, and you’ll search the Web faster.

In Part 1 of Searching the Web, we covered the various tools available to us in our valiant quest for that holy grail of the Web – relevant information. But choosing the right tool for your mission is only the first step. Now you need to know how to get the best use out of your chosen weapon.

• Directories are simple enough to navigate. Because they’re compiled by people, they pretty much speak our language. Search engines speak a language too, but it’s not English, it’s the language of logic. This article should teach you the jargon and patter you need have in order to make sense of that logic.

If someone came up to you in the street, tapped you on the shoulder and shouted, ‘Cricket AND Stewart; NOT crooked NOT corruption!’ you’d probably find yourself tripping backwards in the opposite direction whilst wishing the stranger a safe and speedy passage back to the nursing home .

• Though search engines respond much more calmly to our own clumsy attempts to interrogate their vast annals of data, they will often to greet us with the electronic version of ‘eh?!’ when we push them too far.

Search engines are always happy to help but would be better employed if we, the users, could understand their lingo. If your ambition is to be the office research-guru then supplement this information with my up coming study on Boolean Algebra. But if instant gratification is your aim, the following tips should help you along.

1. Adjust your expectations
First of all, it’s important to remember that no single search engine indexes all the sites on the Web.

Regardless of their exaggerated claims, even the major search engines like AltaVista, Lycos and MSN won’t give you every instance of your search words on the Net. In fact, according to Search Engine Watch, even the top search engines find less than half of what’s really available on the Internet.

So, start by trying several search engines to see which ones produce the most useful results for the type of information you usually look for. If one search engine fails to produce the results you want then simply try another.

2. Negotiate your terms
The efficiency of your search depends a great deal on the way in which you compose your search terms.

Most search engines will have an initial screen with a single, long data entry line, into which you can type a series of search words. Remember these points when deciding how to compose your search terms.

• Always enter your search words in lower-case letters (with the exception of the first letter of proper names, such as ‘George Lucas’). Some, though not all, search engines are case sensitive. Some will allow you to choose whether the search should be case-sensitive.

• Many engines such as HotBot will give you the option to ‘Match All Words’ or ‘Match Exact Phrase’. This instructs the search engine to return only documents which include all of the search terms, or the exact phrase in the search term.

• Use these options if you are looking for something very specific. So, searching for the phrase ‘cricket scandal’ will return a few dozen pages. Searching for ‘scandal’ and ‘cricket’ as individual words however, will return over a million links to pages featuring everything from the lifestyles of the British clergy to that of hopping, chirping insects – not forgetting that ubiquitous cigar-wielding President.

• Always enter the more important words first. Example: for information from a specified country type the country first and then the keyword. ‘UK cricket’ will give you decidedly different results from ‘cricket UK’.

• Search for both British and American spellings. The majority of the information on the Web is American (look … they were here first and there’s more of them, ok?).
  So if you’re looking for words like colour, centre or catalogue then you need to consider entering their American spellings ‘color’, ‘center’ and ‘catalog’. This way you’ll find your results aren’t biased towards pages originated in the UK. Inversely, the rule applies if you wish to narrow your search to British authors.

• Some search engines allow the use of ‘wildcard’ characters in search statements. Wildcards are useful for retrieving variant spellings (eg. color, colour) and words with a common root (e.g. sociology, sociological, sociologist, sociologists, etc.). Wildcard characters vary from one search engine to another, the most common ones being *, #, and ?

• Make your search is as specific as possible. Do you want to buy new cricket equipment or are you looking for a pair of ‘Ultralite cricket laggards with a double centre strap’? If it’s the laggards you’re after, your next step is to break the search request into its individual facets. These would be ‘Ultralite’, ‘cricket laggards’ and ‘double centre strap’. Suits you, sir!

• Many search engines allow you to put special ‘operators’ into your search terms. These operators contribute to the way the engine selects and ranks the pages it returns. For example, the search string --

  UK British+cricket +Botham+Lara-match-fixing-scandal

  will search firstly for the words ‘UK’ or ‘British’. It will then select from the results, only those pages that contain the words ‘cricket’ and ‘Botham’ and ‘Lara’. All pages containing the words ‘match-fixing’ or ‘scandal’ will be excluded.

  The results will contain lots of information about the game of cricket and two of its top players, and will have filtered out most references to allegations of match-fixing and tearful confessions from members of the boys brigade. The syntax for these operators may vary between search engines, so you will need to follow the last, and probably the most important rule …

• RTFM. This anagram is popular amongst harassed techies forced to answer inane questions from people like me who’d rather ‘wing it’ than read the instructions first. RTFM stands for ‘Read The Fine Manual’. The third word in the phrase is often replaced by more contemporary and explicit adjectives, many of which I’m sure your own imagination can supply.

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