Tips for Searching Online

Many people have difficulty finding relevant results for their search requests. If you are one of those people, this article is for you. First, you must pick a topic. If you want a web site, you would want to search for "web designers", right? Okay, where do you search for web designers? Pick a search engine or directory.

There are specific directories that list only web sites that are related to that directory. For example, 1234-find-web-designers.com or comparewebdesigners.com only list web designers. You will not have to search through fashion designers, interior designers or other unrelated sites. These directories can be found by searching for "web designer directories" at search engines. Of course, you can substitute the keywords "web designer" with "sports" for sports directories. The point is there are easier ways to get more relevant results and quicker results.

Which search engines are better? It depends on the topic and how you search it. Northern Light is useful for searching for printed material. They have a list of business publications from which they search and get results. Did you ever wonder why a certain web site was found in your results? The keywords you typed appear somewhere in the web page. Hold Control and F to see the Find box, type your keywords, and hit the Find Next button. The keywords should be highlighted. This is very useful when the pages are long. (Note: Keywords are highlighted for Google results.)

There are different search sites that use different formulas to get their results. The pay-per-click search engines accept bids and those who bid the most, get to be placed higher in the results listing. Are these sites more relevant? Not necessarily, they just paid for better positioning so their links have a better chance of being clicked. Some searches have a formula for determining relevancy, but this is not perfect. A site that refers to puppies twenty times may not rank at all when searching for "dogs", because the word "dogs" does not appear in the text. I would still consider it relevant, but the search may not. Even if the words appear in the META keywords in that site's code, the word must still appear in the text of the page to be considered relevant.

Some sites use popular, unrelated keywords in their unseen code, to be listed in popular search results. This is unethical and doesn't serve any useful purpose. If you wanted to visit sites about the Beatles and you find a link to "Joe Fool's Dog House Repair", you would not be interested in this site. You may click the site and try the Find tip to figure out why this site was in the search engine results, and not find "the Beatles" anyway, because they placed it in their unseen code. The keywords may appear in the META tags in the source code or as text that is in the same color as the background, so you do not see it. The keywords may appear in comment statements in the code that do not appear on the site. (Note: Comment tags are now ignored by search engines.)

Cheating like this is considered spamming (unrequested and unwanted solicitation) and those sites can and will be banned from search engines. If you find sites like this, contact the company to warn them. I believe that businesses are unaware that some webmasters use unethical ways to improve search engine ranking. I would hate to see an honest company be banned and have to get a new domain name and start the ranking game all over due to another person's foolishness. I do believe this activity should be reported, though. Please contact the offending site's business and let them get it corrected.

Now that you understand about results, how can you improve them? Read the guidelines on search engine and directory sites. Some allow you to place quotes around the keywords or choose the exact phrase, some allow you to place a plus or minus to determine words to include or exclude, and some allow for operators such as AND, OR, and NOT. If you want web designers, type "web designers" or +web+designers or web AND designers AND NOT fashion AND NOT clothing. We do not want fashion designers or clothing designers. These are a few examples. If you get more specific, you will get less results, but more relevant ones. For example, instead of just typing "web designers", type "allentown web designers". If you cannot find some in your city, type your state or a major city near you.

My favorite searches are Google and MSN search powered by Windows Live. I use many searches and directories, because I get different results. I like to use local directories, when I want to choose services near my location. See a few listed on our Search the Web page.

Knowing where to search, how to search and why you get these results will help you get better results. Enjoy searching the Internet and don't think that you have to remain faithful to one search engine. That would be like shopping at only one store. You may be missing something that can be found somewhere else. I hope you find what you are searching for.

Yvette Kuhns, Power Pages Web Design, June 7, 2002 (Updated July 30, 2007)

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