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When you perform a search, what you don't want to get back are several hundred thousand often completely irrelevant entries. Of course, the information you're looking for might be in there somewhere but by the time you find it you will probably have forgotten what it was that you were looking for.
What you do want to get back, on the other hand, are relevant, useful returns which you can evaluate quickly and painlessly.
Search engines and indexes differ on how they handle your search parameters so it's always a good idea to visit them first (by clicking on their names above) and glance over their "Help" sheets before you use them.
However, here's a few general pointers to bear in mind:
- Don't be vague with your search words - the more specific you can be, the better
- Use lowercase text in your searches. When you use lowercase, the search finds documents containing the words regardless of case (both uppercase and lowercase results). When you use uppercase text, the search finds only documents that contain the word capitalised as you have typed it.
Example: Type liverpool, and you'll find Liverpool, liverpool, LIVERPOOL. Type Liverpool, and you'll find only Liverpool.
- If you're searching on more that one word (eg Mona Lisa) don't leave spaces between them - instead, link them with "+" signs otherwise some search engines will assume you want pages which contain either Mona or Lisa.
Example 1: Type mona lisa to find documents that contain either mona or lisa or any capitalised variant - Mona, MONA, liSA, Lisa.
Example 2: Type +mona+lisa to find documents that contain both words but not necesarily next to each other. Be sure there is no space between the plus sign and the word.
- If you want to find information on just the "Mona Lisa" itself then you should put it inside quotation marks.
Example: Type "Mona Lisa" to find documents that have the two words capitalised and found right next to each other.
Placing quotation marks around any series of words turns them into a phrase and tells the search engine that you are only interested in documents that have the words in this specific order.
- Use a "-" sign to help you to fine tune your search queries.
Example: Type +"Mona Lisa"-Louvre to find documents that contain the phrase Mona Lisa but do not contain the word Louvre.
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