Tom Verzi PRONTO ERP 952-942-5858 e-mail protected from spam bots

# # #

I am not suggesting you use lots and lots of words willy nilly. The best method is to think of very specific words related to what you’re looking for, be a little creative, and watch what order you put words in. Searching for ‘broadway wicked musical tickets’ and ‘tickets broadway wicked musical’ will give you different results.

Never search using one word. Avoid only using two words. Try to use 3-7 words. This search rule follows law of diminishing returns however. So searching using 25 words will probably get you little or no results. So there is a “sweet spot” you’ll have to discover for any given search, but it is almost always using more than 1-2 words.

Use more than one search engine. When I search on Web, I use more than one browser and more than one search engine or directory. The difference between two is that search engines are run automatically while directories are run by humans. Google is a search engine and show search results of websites that no one has actually looked at in advance. Directories on other hand contain websites that have actually been reviewed by a person. Therefore, results you get will differ. A good list of directories can be found at http://www.directoryarchives.com.

Open up your browser and click on ‘File’ in top left of your browser and select ‘New’ > ‘Window’. Do this a couple of times until you have three or more browsers open on your desktop at same time. Choose your search words carefully, use more than two words and try same exact phrase in Yahoo, MSN, Google, and a favorite directory using a different browser for each. That way you can compare results to find best ones. You can also try a new site I found called http://yagoohoogle.com/ which lets you perform a simultaneous search on both Google and Yahoo.

Use modifiers in your searches. Going back to tickets example, let’s say I wanted to find airline tickets, but each time I performed a search on tickets, most of results had to do with sports and theater tickets. I could weed out all those irrelevant results by using minus (-) sign next to word ‘theater’. Bad search: tickets Better search: tickets to New York Even better search: airline tickets to New York –theater

So if you are getting a lot of extraneous results in your searches, try adding a minus sign to words you don’t want showing up in your results.

Another good tip is using quotes around your phrases. By doing this you are telling search engine to find exact phrase and in order you are specifying. By adding quotes, you are being much more specific. You’ll get very different results using quotes. If you searched for ‘2005 NBA playoff tickets’ (without quotes) you are asking search engine to look for sites that have words 2005, NBA, playoff, and tickets associated with them. So you will probably come up with airline tickets, football playoff information, NBA history and so forth. If you put quotes around your phrase you’ll get much closer to what you want.

Use ‘Find’ function. Trust me; this one suggestion is worth price of admission alone. You will save lots of valuable time if you do this. Ever get to a Web page that has a lot of text on it, and quickly scanning page doesn’t immediately produce what you’re looking for? In fact, scanning just makes you dizzy.

Try this: while holding down your ‘Ctrl’ key hit your ‘F’ key (this works on PCs only). A ‘Find’ dialog box should pop up. Simply type word or phrase you’re looking for in box and hit ‘Enter’ and it will immediately find each and every instance of it on Web page you’re on. This will truly save you time if you remember to use it.

One can get lost on Net. There is so much information, and almost all of it is not applicable to what you want at any given time. If you use Net for your business, pinpointing appropriate and relevant information quickly will put you ahead of pack every time. By following these simple suggestions, you will find more accurate results which will reduce your frustration, save you time, and give you an edge over others who are still searching for information like a caveman at steps of a library.