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Narrow Your Search
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Improve Search Results by Narrowing Your Search Criteria

You can greatly improve the quality of your search results with search engines, web directories and some specialized search engines by narrowing your search.  You do this by using operators. Let’s look at some examples:

Type in a search for.....

And you’ll get these results:

george washington

Documents that contain either the word george or washington, regardless of capitalization. Usually the pages that contain both words will be closer to the top of the results.

George Washington

Documents that contain either the word george or washington.  Some search engines will assume that if you capitalize a word, you only want the results where the match is also capitalized.

+george +washington

Pages must contain both words. Be sure there is no space between the + and the word. 

“George Washington”

Pages that have the two words (and may match capitalization) next to each other. Any time you use quotation marks, the search will look for that phrase in the specific order you typed it.

-george +washington

Pages that do NOT contain the word george but DO contain the word washington.  Be sure there is no space between the minus(-) or plus (+) symbols and the word.

+george +wash*

Pages that contain george and any word starting with the wash. Use an asterisk(*) when you are not sure how a word is spelled or want variations of a word. 

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Internet 101, a guide to the Internet  that's easy to understand.  Learn the Basics of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, how to use email, use and organize Bookmarks and Favorites, and Search the Internet effectively