"The Internet is exploding with empty dazzle," explains Richard Saul Wurman, "sites that direct you to nonexistent links, send you down fruitless paths, and generally don't help you get where you want to go … Several studies have found that somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of people searching for information on the Web failed to find what they were looking for."^[1]

And we thought the Internet was supposed to be the mother of all information, the answer to all our information needs. Instead, it frustrates us most of the time—60 to 80 percent of the time. How ironic.

Still, by knowing how to properly search the web, we can flip that statistic upside down: we can find what we're looking for 60 to 80 percent of the time. Here are five tips for more successful web searches. By using these principles, you're highly likely to find what you're looking for online—in the first page of results.

1. Choose the Right Search Engine for the Job

Google.com is still the best all-purpose search engine. But the Internet offers many other search engines, some of which outperform Google on certain tasks. Let me recommend which search engine to use when.

When you want the widest possible search:

• HotBot.com lets you select from four search engines: HotBot, Google, Lycos, and AskJeeves. (HotBot also lets you filter out offensive content, change the look of results pages, and save your search preferences.)
• Gigablast.com is simple to use, and if you don't find what you want, each results page allows you to search in six other search engines, including Google and Wisenut.

Faster than those are the metasearch engines, which search many search engines in one pass:

• Dogpile.com fetches results from six search engines, including Google and Yahoo. (Too bad its sponsored links look just like the noncommercial ones.)
• Metacrawler.com covers eight search engines: Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, About, Looksmart, FindWhat, Overture, and Altavista. (The Exact Phrase feature doesn't appear to work, however.)

Even better, choose your own list of search engines, directories, and news sites to search—in one pass:

• Mamma.com (www.mamma.com/psearch.html) is good, and Vivisimo.com (vivisimo.com) is better, because it lets you search sites like eBay, CNN, and Britannica.
• If you want the ultimate in search coverage and don't mind software adventures, download the free Internet browser Mozilla Firefox (www.mozilla.org/products/firefox). Firefox lets you download free plug-ins to search more than one hundred search engines, reference sites, and more (www.texturizer.net/firefox/extensions).

For news:

• News.Google.com searches 4,500 news sources—and adds breaking news to its home page continuously.
• For European and international news, uk.newsbot.msn.com works similarly.

For books and magazines:

• Amazon.com allows you to search the text of more than 120,000 books. Click the Books tab and then use the Search Books tool at the top of the left column.
• LookSmart.com offers 3.5 million magazine articles from more than 700 publications. Just click the Articles tab.

For entertainment, pop culture, and personals:

• Lycos.com. More a home page than a search engine, Lycos helps you browse as much as search. Click any result, and Lycos deftly brings up the web page, so you can see if it's what you want, but keeps your search results in the left column, so you can easily return to them.
• Eurekster.com offers an intriguing twist: personalized search. Your search results are affected by what you and your friends (the ones who use Eurekster, anyway) have searched for recently. If you and your friends are fans of a new band or TV show, you'll help each other find the best sites.
• MSN.com Search offers useful channels to browse, as well as a solid search engine.
• Yahoo.com offers numerous popular search categories, such as Real Estate and Personals.

For shopping in mail-order catalogs:

• Catalogs.Google.com searches 6,000 catalogs and returns pictures from their pages.

For searching sites in foreign languages:

• AltaVista.com, which offers nice translation tools.

For when you don't know what term to use:

• AskJeeves.com allows you to type a question. Suppose you want to find information about the current prime minister of Israel but can't remember his name. At AskJeeves, simply type, "Who is the current Israeli prime minister?"

For phone numbers and addresses:

• Click the tab for White Pages or for Yellow Pages at Dogpile.com, and usually you'll quickly find the right person or business, complete with a map to their location.

For pictures:

• Google.com offers an easy way to search through 425 million images, using the Image tab on the home page. Close behind are AltaVista.com and Yahoo.com.

For videos:

• AlltheWeb.com. Use the Advanced Search under Video to choose streamed or downloadable files and video file format.

For overall, everyday use, I like, in this order:

• Google.com now conducts 55 percent of all searches on the web, for good reasons.^[2] Simple to use, fast, exhaustive, Google usually returns the most relevant results.
• Mamma.com stands out because it searches many other engines but returns only the best results. I like getting only a few dozen, highly relevant results.
• Wisenut.com's Sneak-a-Peek feature allows you to open a web page while in the results list so you can see if it's what you want.
• Teoma.com offers a simple design with bonus features. Next to your results, you get suggestions on how to narrow your search. For example, search on "Super Bowl" and you get six suggestions, including Super Bowl History and Super Bowl Tickets. Below those suggestions, Teoma also gives "collection websites" that may be a mother lode on the topic you searched for. For my search on "Super Bowl," the ten sites listed include www.superbowlhotelrooms.com

I suggest you bookmark your two favorite search engines so you can quickly return to them. (To bookmark in Outlook, select Favorites, Add to Favorites.) Even better, Google, AltaVista, AskJeeves, and other search engines allow you to add their search box to your browser's toolbar, so you don't even have to visit the site to start searching. I love this. (To add this feature, go to the particular site. At Google.com, for example, click on Services and Tools, then scroll down and click on Google Toolbar.)

2. Add and Arrange Words to Make Your Search as Specific as Possible

Add words to make your search as specific as possible. For example, don't search on meatloaf when you really want meatloaf recipes; instead of typing information overload, key in surviving information overload.

Use precise wording. If you're looking for information on scleroderma, type scleroderma rather than skin diseases or autoimmune conditions.

Arrange words in order from most important to least important. Better than small Midwest colleges is colleges Midwest small.

Avoid common words, since search engines throw those words out anyway. For example, when I searched on Kevin A. Miller, the search engine threw out A since the word is so common. That meant I got results for Kevin F. Miller and for Kevin Doolittle and Lauren Miller. The solution to this problem is point 3, which in my opinion would help web searchers more than any other.

3. Use Quotation Marks Around Phrases

Instead of typing Kevin A. Miller, enter "Kevin A. Miller," and the search engine will return only web pages that include that exact phrase, with the words in that order. Thus, quotation marks usually narrow your search to what you're actually seeking. For example, if I search on Cornerstone Festival, I get 59,000 results, but if I add quotation marks and search on "Cornerstone Festival," a summer rock-music event, I get only 4,710.

Quotation marks make it possible to quickly find common information.

To find a residential phone number, type "the person's name" "their city, state abbreviation." (In Google, add rphonebook: at the beginning.)

To find a commercial phone number, type "the company's name" "contact us". (Or in Google, bphonebook: "the company's name".)

To find directions, type in "the address of your destination". Google gives you two links (one from Yahoo! Maps and the other from MapQuest) so you can quickly get a map of that location. The map pages also contain links for driving directions.

To find the best price on a product, type "the model name and number" "price comparison."

These first three principles—the right search engine, precise wording, and quotation marks—work together well. PC magazine gives a good example:

"Bill and Melinda Gates recently had a baby girl, and you want to find out the baby's name. Lycos and Yahoo! are good sites to use for news searches, because they carry breaking stories from newswire services. "Bill and Melinda Gates" baby retrieves pages that are about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and babies in general, so you need to add more definitive terms. If you refine the search to "Bill and Melinda Gates" daughter, the first five results are announcements about the new Gates baby."^[3]

4. Use Operators and Wildcards

Many people search happily without this principle, but if you search the web frequently, take ten minutes to learn it well. Your investment of ten minutes will be amply rewarded.

To make your search exact, use operators, which are symbols, or words in capital letters, that tell the search engine what to do and what not to do. Search engines assume the operator AND between words. That means they return results that include all the words you typed. For example, ice hockey will return only pages that have both the word ice and the word hockey in them. You won't get pages that have only the word ice somewhere, as in Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

The operator OR tells the search engine to find pages with any of the words you typed. This comes in handy when a word has synonyms and you don't care which word you find. For example, type turkey AND dressing OR stuffing. That will return pages with turkey and dressing; you'll also get pages with turkey and stuffing.

The operator NOT, usually expressed as a minus sign (-), excludes words you don't want. For example, in the earlier example about the Gateses' baby, you could type "Bill and Melinda Gates" baby -Foundation to make sure you don't get any pages about the Gates Foundation.

Use a wildcard symbol, usually an asterisk (*), when you need to pull up all forms of a word. For example, theat* will return theater, theatre, and theatrical. Typing color* will return colors, coloring, coloration (and Colorado, which you probably don't want; to solve that, type color* -Colorado).

Few people will need to search by URL, link, or domain, but should you, see the clear guidelines at SearchEngineWatch.com: www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2155981.

5. When General Search Engines Don't Work, Try Directories, Specific Sites, or Librarians

Now you know how to conduct word searches well. But sometimes general search engines still don't yield what you need.

Try the Directory tab. In Google, if your search yields too many results, click the Directory tab at the top of your search results page. This will return websites that focus on your topic and will greatly reduce the number of results. For example, a search on "Ellen DeGeneres" yielded 141,000 results. A click on the Directory tab then narrowed that number to 359.

Check out specialized websites for your topic. For example, here are two dozen information sites I've used, in alphabetical order by topic.

Bible: Bible Gateway (bible.gospelcom.net). You can search easily by word or Bible verse. Blue Letter Bible (blueletterbible.org) adds study tools, maps, hymns, and devotionals.

Books: Amazon.com, of course, or for rare books, Bookfinder.com. And remember that Amazon allows you to search the complete text of 120,000 books.

Business: CEO Express (www.ceoexpress.com), a nice portal for business sites.

Cars: Edmunds.com.

Christianity: For current information, ChristianityToday.com, and for classic reading, Christian Classics Ethereal Library (www.ccel.org).

Dictionaries: Bartleby.com outdoes Dictionary.com.

Facts: RefDesk.com calls itself "the single best source for facts" on the Net, and it just might be. If you still don't find what you're looking for, check Library Spot (www.libraryspot.com), a portal to virtually any information a library contains.

Health: With nearly 20,000 health websites, many of which offer unproven information, I stay with MayoClinic.com.

Ideas: To stay fresh on the world of ideas, check out Arts and Letters Daily (www.aldaily.com).

Maps: MapQuest.com or MSN Maps and Directions, which offers the nice LineDrive feature (maps.msn.com).

Movies: For the content and quality of a specific movie, I like Screenit.com (though it loads slowly). To research actors, directors, and the film industry, choose imdb.com.

Myths and hoaxes: Is that story going around the Net really true? www.snopes2.com will know.

Phone numbers: SuperPages.com.

Pictures: The images directory in Google makes finding pictures a snap. Go to www.google.com and click on the Images tab.

Sports: Espn.com tops cnnsi.com, in my opinion.

Weather: weather.com.

Call a Librarian.

Still stumped?

Remember, the web isn't the only way to find information, and often it's not the best way. Writes Richard Saul Wurman: "The highest-tech choice isn't always the most efficient, although sometimes the dazzle blinds us to more dowdy, but perhaps speedier solutions, like the old-fashioned reference librarian. Librarians find information for a living. If you need to know something specific, you can get an answer from a librarian before you can make your way through thousands of responses to a search engine query."^[4]

Kevin A. Miller is vice president of resources for Christianity Today International, editor-at-large of Leadership Journal and executive editor for PreachingToday.com. He is the author of numerous periodical articles, as well as the books Secrets of Staying Power and More Than You and Me.

Surviving Information Overload by Kevin A. Miller Zondervan, 2004 192 pp.; $9.99, Paperback

^[1] "Richard Saul Wurman, "Redesign the Data Dump: As the author of 1989's Information Anxiety proves again, 'information architecture' still has a long way to go," Business 2.0 (28 November, 2000), 212.

^[2] Geoffrey Nunberg, "As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation," New York Times, 18 May 2003, www.nytimes.com, www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/google.html. The percentage is variously reported. Lev Grossman, "Search and Destroy," Time, 22 December 2003, writes, "Right now 32% of all Web searches go through google.com. That number shoots to around 70% when you count searches on sites like AOL.com, which licenses Google's technology."

^[3] Janet Rubenking, "Search Smarter," PC magazine (4 February 2003), pp. 66-67

^[4] Richard Saul Wurman, "Warp-Speed Rules: What successful designers and communicators need to master in a Net-connected world," Business 2.0 (28 November, 2000), 222

Copyright © 2004 Regent Business Review, Issue 13. Used by permission.