Searches: Accurate, Comprehensive, and Quick

If you’re like me, you learned to do google searches by the hunt & peck method. And, that works fine. However, while I was hunting and pecking the other day, I stumbled on an article entitled Ten Tips for Smarter, More Efficient Internet Searching.

Let me mention a few of the tips. You may or may not know these, but I’m guessing that out of the ten tips in the complete article, you’ll find at least one helpful item.

1. First of all, you don’t need to use capital letters. You can search for the Village Writing School as:

You’ll get the same search results.

2. Second, you don’t need to use common words such as a and the.

3.  Usually, you can skip typing punctuation marks.

4. Drop the suffixes. If you’re looking for writers, just type in writer. Novelinstead of novels, search instead of searches.

5. Use the plus sign. If you need something specific, use several key words joined together with a plus + sign. While working on my memoir, I searched for other similar books by typing memoir + polio. By doing that, I discovered a list of specific memoirs gathered into one list. (Thanks to our new member, Mary Hutson, for reminding me of this helpful tip.)

If you’d like more tips on the essential art of internet searching, go to the complete article in Tech Republic.