It has always fascinated me how some people can find information on the internet far quicker than others. Working in a technical team highlights how some people are plugged into searching the internet far better than others but this is even more exaggerated when amongst friends and family. So how do you find information on the web easier?
Introduction
We recently received a phone call from Yell who were looking for us to advertise in their directory and on-line through their Yell.com portal. A lot has changed since the days of JR Hartley hunting around for his Fly Fishing book and despite reviving their campaign recently with the Day V Lately hunting around for his old record, Yell is no longer the first port of call for people to find information. (We politely declined the offer if advertising from the Yell man).
Search Engines ” The Yell Killers?
The first port of call for many to find out information are search engines and for the majority of people this means Google. Searching Google doesn’t necessarily mean you will find the information you are looking for. The Google results have become increasingly crowded in the past few years especially with people vying to get to page one. Google updates it algorithm regularly to try to give its users the relevant results they are seeking. However compaies are always tryingto beat the system and often the results are disappointing to say the least.
Here are some tips that may help you to get the most out of your Google search experience:
Tip 1: Use the advanced search :
By using the advanced search features you are brought to a new search page that will enable you to easily add more criteria to your search. By entering your search criteria into the boxes it will create an advanced search string for you.
You can create and advanced search string on the main Google page if you know the Google operators. A list of which can be found here. Further examples of useful search strings can be found in the Resource section at the bottom of this post.
The advanced criteria that I find the most useful is “exact wording or phrase” . So for example if you entered the keywords dog walker Google will return results for pages the contained the words dog OR walker. By using the exact wording or phrase Google will only return pages containing the phrase dog walker and so the results start to become more relevant.
You may also want to enter some negative keywords to refine your search results further. So for example a search for dog walker -cat will bring up results for websites that include the selected phrase that do not contain the word cat.
If you are looking for a local service don’t forget to put a location in. For example dog walker Taunton. This will bring up results with a map so you can see the providers local to you.
Searching within a site or domain enables you to delve deeper into larger content rich sites. When you enter a search phrase, by default Google only brings up two pages from any particular site. You could be missing out on the relevant information.
Tip 2: Use the Extra Search tools on the results page :
On the results page there is a hidden secret search gem to help you refine your search results. On the left hand of the results page if you click on More search tools you will be presented with some options to enable you to refine your search. I particularly find the refine by date options useful as it will return more up to date results.
Putting your location in also helps refine the results especially if you are looking for a locally based service.
The related searches option is also a very useful tool as it gives you results for related search terms that you may not have though of. So a search for dog walking services brought up related searches of dog boarding services dog grooming services amongst others.
Clicking the More button under Places will reveal options to search blogs,real-time Twitter feeds and discussions on forums. Searching the discussions enables you to see if other people are asking similar questions to you and you can potentially engage with them via the forums. (I will expand on the benefits of this type of search in my next post.)
Tip 3: Don’t be afraid to go past Page 1 :
People often say to me how did you find that It is because I am a fearless internet explorer! (on that note I tend to use Chrome as my browser). I am prepared to venture beyond the boundaries of Page 1 of Google and into the wilderness beyond.
Here lie some of the gems of the internet. Websites with information that is relevant to what I am looking for that unfortunately got pushed down the rankings by other sites that have the budgets to spend on search engine optimisation but whose content isn’t really that good.
Conclusion
This is the anomaly of search results on Google. The phrase content is king is bandied about all over the place but low value low quality content often makes it higher in the rankings than better quality content. This however hopefully will not be the case in future as Google’s recent Panda update was brought in to deal with these low quality content farm sites.
Search isn’t the only way to find useful information on the Web. The rising upstart of Social Media is moving in on Google’s territory as the place to find information, having already usurped Yell’s business model.
In my next post I will reveal some vauable tips on how to find information using Social Media, especially information you didn’t know you knew you needed!
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns 
the ones we don’t know we don’t know Donald Rumsfeld ” US Secretary of State
I would love to hear your top tips for using search too!