The beauty of advanced search

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Everyone loves the information available on the Internet. Everyone hates pages of irrelevant hits. One possible way to reduce retrieving useless results is to use the “advanced search” option offered by some engines. By starting out on this “Advanced” page, searchers can apply many useful filters and refine their results.

Google, Ask, Zuula, and Exalead are all great examples. Just follow the “advanced search” link located by their main search box. Each has a template to make Boolean searching easier. In addition, Exalead includes options for proximity operators. Google and Exalead allow the searcher to narrow by file format (e.g. .PDF, .DOC, .XLS). Another extremely useful feature is the ability to narrow by a specific domain or domain type. This way you can limit your search to only a certain website (e.g. www.wisbar.org) or type (e.g. only pages that have an .edu ending).

You will see an improvement in your results if you utilize the “advanced” option of your favorite engine. Check out the help pages for additional information and direction.

Interested in more on search engines? There are two great sites worth checking out: Search Engine Showdown and Search Engine Watch.