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This page is not strictly an FAQ (there are no questions and answers). However, I hope it does provide help to those using search engines.

It's not meant to be a comprehensive guide to using search engines. Most have their own instructions in their HELP page.

The following information can be used in many of the search engines, both the web-wide search engines and site-wide search engines. NOT ALL of them work the same way. If you have questions, find their "Search Help" links (especially on the web-wide search engines) or read the articles at Web Searching Tips

Some of the more popular Web-Wide Search Engines (as of July 2006) are:

Other search engines:

Search Boxes

Remember, not all search engines work the same, and may not allow some of these options.

Capitalization

You should know that using no capitalization may give you better results than using it. This is because not everyone writes their content the same way. If you searched for "Hamilton", you may miss out on those pages that use "HAMILTON". And, if you search for "HAMILTON", you may miss out on those pages with the term "Hamilton". However, if you search for "hamilton", most search engines will find both "Hamilton" and "HAMILTON" as well as "hamilton", and various other capitalization "schemes".

Phrases

Some people DON'T know, however, that you can use a phrase as a term in many of the engines, by just surrounding it with quotes. For example, "hamilton county" (without quotes) will result in all the pages with the terms "hamilton" and "county" in them. BUT, if you put the quotes around the phrase ("hamilton county"), this will result in only those pages with the PHRASE "hamilton county" in them.

Multiple Terms

Entering a single term will result in all the web pages that the search engine has indexed, with that term in it. To narrow your search, you can do a number of things, including simply adding other terms. This will normally result in searches that contain ALL of the terms for which you are searching, thus cutting down on the number of results. In most cases, the more terms you add, the fewer pages will be in the results. NOTE: In this case, a "term" can be a single word, a phrase, or something else (we'll get into that later).

Adding a plus-sign ("+") in front of any term (ie: +hamilton or '+"hamilton county"') will normally ENSURE the results contain it. (Some search engines find pages based on the terms, and without the "+", will give results with some listed terms, but not ALL of them.)

"Minusing Out" Terms

If, after adding terms to your search, you still get an inordinate number of results, some search engines will allow you to "minus out" terms. For example, adding:

-"north dakota" -ND

(be sure to include the quotes) will REMOVE all search results that match your original terms and also contain either "north dakota" or "ND" (as a word). (These will NOT show up in the results.)

Boolean Words

Most search engines differentiate between the word "and" and "AND", "or" and "OR", searching for those pages with the word not in caps in them. If you capitalize the word, it will find the term to the left AND right (or the term to the left OR to the right) of the word. If other terms are added, you will probably want to use parentheticals (see below).

Note that most engines "AND" the terms entered. For those with an "Any", "All" and/or "Exact Phrase" option, it would be the same as "ALL". Using the "+" option, above, is akin to using the word "AND" in the search box.

For search boxes where you don't know if they are "AND"ed, place the word "AND" between terms.

For example:

indiana AND "hamilton county" AND carmel AND hospital

will find pages that contain all of the terms in them. Each result listed will contain ALL of the words and phrases.

The Boolean word "OR" is akin to using the "ANY" option. Again, you place the word "OR" between terms.

For example:

indiana OR "hamilton county" OR carmel

will find pages that contain any of the terms in them. Some may contain all of them, but all result pages will contain at least one term.

Parentheticals

Parentheticals basically use parentheses to create a single term, normally using Boolean words.

For example:

"randolph county" (genealogic OR genealogical) indiana record

should find all pages with the terms "randolph county", indiana, record, and genealogic, OR those with "randolph county", indiana, record, and genealogical in them.

Personally, I use them more for genealogical searches, when it's possible a last name could be spelled different ways. For example:

"highland county" +ohio +("emerie" OR "emrie" OR "emery" OR "emry") james

NOTE: I haven't found many site-search engines that allow this. HOWEVER, some of those using search boxes from Web-Wide search engines should allow it.

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Drop-Box Options

These tricks will work in many places, but not all drop-box selections allow it. Most will tell you, though, if you're not sure, it can't hurt to try.

In many cases, when a site-search engine (such as those on job-search sites) have multiple selections for certain categories, they put them in "drop-down boxes" These are somewhat like a full window with scroll-bars, except much smaller, and each line is a selection. Many of these allow multiple selections in each category at the same time.

To get one selection, all you need to do is scroll to it and click on it. This highlights it so you know which selection will be used.

It's possible to make more than one selection, in many of these. Some include options for "ALL", and some will limit the number of selections.

To select multiple options, simply:

  1. Click on one selection
  2. Scroll to another you wish to make at the same time
  3. Hold down the CONTROL button and click the second selection
  4. Repeat 2-3 until the maximum allowed is reached

Be careful not to accidentally click on an option without the CONTROL button being down, or you will have to start over.

A trick to get ALL of the options in the category, as long as there's no limit set for it, is to:

  1. Click on the first "real" option (sometimes, the first option is not really an option, and sometimes it says ALL)
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the selections
  3. Hold down the SHIFT button and click the LAST selection

This is, in most cases, much easier than CONTROL-CLICKING on each option.

I have found cases where there are two category boxes, and you must select at least one in each (and the ALL doesn't count.) I found I could select ALL in one of the boxes, but it wouldn't allow me to do so in the other, too. So I used the method to get ALL, above, and the results showed them all.

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