How do you search?
Posted By Industrial Web Solutions Marketing Team on June 19, 2009
It seems like a simple question, but how people use search engines like Google matters a lot to a lot of people, and matters a lot to you if you have your own website. Having been working with clients and my own family and friends, the number of ways that people use their browsers and their search engines varies a lot more than one would think. You can’t really do anything “wrong” if you find what you are looking for, but there are some tips and tricks you might find helpful. And if you have anything you think people would like to know – put it in the comments!
To Quote or not to Quote
Using quotes around your search term can most definitely change your results. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. Most search engines will use quotes around a search term literally. If you search for: “Industrial Search” and put it in quotes like I just did, then you are asking for those words in that order and nothing else. If you just put in: Industrial Search then you are saying pretty much the same thing, but if you look in Google using my examples you will see that the results do change a little from one to the other. Generally, using quotes is a good idea if you need to find something verrrry specific. And you can also lose out if you don’t type it exactly the way it is written on a page.
Search Plus!
Using the plus sign is something that Google will take very seriously. Say you are looking for something that is pretty specific, like industrial gige cables. You will get your resutls, but perhaps you are not finding the results you need. That’s where the plus comes in. Google is taking each word you asked for and treating it equally. The more words, the more spread out things will be. So try the plus sign in front of the words that matter most. In this example, use industrial +gige +cables. See how the results change? You are saying that you want results but that they MUST contain the word gige AND the word cables. Industrial still matters, but you are saying it is not required. The plus sign can be handy when you want to make sure you get the info you need and some extra info you might want.
Minus...Minus?
Yes, the minus. You can use the minus sign in the search engines and it comes in very handy if you are looking for something that has more than one meaning. Any industrial manufacturer knows they can be looking for something that means something else to the majority of people. And that can make searching frustrating and cause even more problems depending on the term. That’s where the minus comes in.
Let’s say you are a bass player. And you want to find pages about bass. Well, as we know, there is the instrument, and there is the fish… Well, you don’t want pages about fish. So what do you do? Well, put in bass -fish. That is telling the engine that you want pages that have the word bass but do NOT have the word fish. So all the fish sites are gone and you have a much better chance to get what you want. Try it out. You can get the pages you want while at the same time getting rid of the junk you know you don’t.
These are pretty simple tips, and the search engines have a lot more things you can do to refine your searches. And they are all designed to get you to where you want to be as quickly as possible. Have you ever used the plus or minus signs? Do you use quotes? Let me know. That’s what the comments are for! 
Comments
Leave a Reply