Effective Online Research

Due to popular demand by many of my readers, i have decided to do a post on how to do effective research.

Google is my top search engine...i think the most widely used one in the world too...and i'm not advertising for them, merely stating my opinion. Now, since i'm no professional, i have decided to extract information from the google search page to provide information that is more accurate than what i could give you off the top of my head.


The Basics of Google Search
To enter a query into Google, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the 'enter' key for a list of relevant web pages. Since Google only returns web pages that contain all the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. Your new query will return a smaller subset of the pages Google found for your original "too-broad" query.


Choosing Keywords
For best results, it's important to choose your keywords wisely. Keep these tips in mind:

Try the obvious first. If you're looking for information on Picasso, enter "Picasso" rather than "painters".

Use words likely to appear on a site with the information you want. "Luxury hotel dubuque" gets better results than "really nice places to spend the night in Dubuque".

Make keywords as specific as possible. "Antique lead soldiers" gets more relevant results than "old metal toys".


Automatic Exclusion of Common Words
Google ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Google will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box.

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search.


Capitalization
Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case.


Word Variations (Stemming)
Google now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. If you search for "pet lemur dietary needs", Google will also search for "pet lemur diet needs", and other related variations of your terms. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result.


Disclaimer: I'm no professional at this, just another student who has assignments to hand in, a job that requires me to do research most of the time, and an immense amount of unusual questions that i would like to have answered.