Bernie Dodge's
Seven Steps Toward Better Searching
Visit Bernie Dodge's page for his search lesson!
Synopsis of the Seven Steps Toward Better Searching:
| My | Minus | Use a "-" to exclude keywords, e.g., -starship |
| plump | Plus | Use a "+" to require keywords, +starfish |
| starfish | Star | Use an "*" as a "wildcard." For example, star* will return pages containing star, stars, starfish, and starship. |
| quickly | Quotes | Use quotation marks around phrases, e.g., "Sequoia High School" |
| lowered | Lower Case | Text in lower case returns more links. Upper case will only return links that are in upper case. |
| Lincoln's | Link | Use link:URL to find pages containing the URL |
| tie | Title | Use title:keyword to find pages with the keyword in the title |
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Every search engine has its own set of rules. Some search engines perform
Boolean searches. To do a Boolean search, you use the word and
instead of a plus sign and the word not instead of a minus sign.
The word near is used instead of quotation marks around a phrase, e.g., Sequoia near High.
Look at the search "rules" (sometimes called "tips" or "help") for some of the search engines below.
On some search engines, you must click on Advanced Search to find the rules.
Click on Google (above) and do the following four searches, writing down the number of matches for each:
- keywords: sojourner mars
- keywords: +sojourner +mars
- keywords: +sojourner +mars -NASA
- keywords: "Sojourner Mars"
What did you learn about the way that Google does searches? Was there a difference in the number
of matches for search #1 and search #2? Try the same search on a different search engine and compare matches.
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