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There are two things you will do on the Internet.<\/p>\nThere are two things you will do on the Internet.<\/p>\n
1 – Find stuff.
\n2 – Buy, look at, read, download or interact with stuff you find.<\/p>\n
You can drastically reduce the “finding” time if you learn the secrets of your search engine.\u00a0 If you use Google (most people do), here is a link to the advanced search help page.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.google.com\/help\/refinesearch.html<\/a><\/p>\n Wikipedia has an exhaustive list<\/a>\u00a0of search engines.\u00a0\u00a0Check the “help” page for specific search terms if you are using something other than Google.\u00a0Years ago I used AltaVista<\/a> as my main search engine.\u00a0 I didn’t switch to Google until after 2002 because the operators were different and I had already memorized all the shortcuts for AltaVista.\u00a0 Eventually, the Google database had so much more information, I switched.\u00a0 At some point in my life I will probably have to switch again.<\/p>\n There are two “operators” that I use most – quotes and the plus sign.<\/p>\n The quotes force the results to match your search word-for-word.<\/p>\n This search:<\/p>\n “alvin trusty”<\/a><\/p>\n has 359 results.\u00a0 All of them have my first name immediately followed by my last name.<\/p>\n This search:<\/p>\n alvin trusty<\/a><\/p>\n has 67,800 results.\u00a0 There are more\u00a0listings\u00a0because Google is not forced to\u00a0find both words in sequence.\u00a0 Actually, the search results will not necessarily have both words.<\/p>\n To force a word to show up in a search, put a plus sign in front of it.<\/p>\n This search:<\/p>\n +alvin +trusty<\/a><\/p>\n has 67,500 hits.\u00a0 Apparently the previous search had 300 pages with only one of the two terms.\u00a0 I think the Google database has gotten so big, almost all searches return results with all the terms.\u00a0 It is as if the plus sign is always used in front of every term.<\/p>\n The minus is also helpful.\u00a0 Sometimes there is one word you do not want in the results.\u00a0 The minus keeps that word out.<\/p>\n chicago bears -teddy<\/a><\/p>\n will remove the word “teddy” from all results.\u00a0 In the above search, that’s\u00a0over a million pages you will not have to look at.<\/p>\n Here is a YouTube video I created last year that shows these search tips plus a few more.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mHLxRe_fx8I<\/a><\/p>\n TSPY=5.42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are two things you will do on the Internet. 1 – Find stuff. 2 – Buy, look at, read, download or interact with stuff you find. You can drastically reduce the “finding” time if you learn the secrets of … Continue reading