Search
Like A Geek
By
Jason OConnor © 2005
Some people search the Web like a Neanderthal standing before the
Library of Congress steps grunting, “Me want food!”
While other, more sophisticated searchers, act more like a person
actually entering the Library of Congress, approaching the librarian,
and saying, “Pardon me, please lead me to your books on agriculture
and growing food, and while you’re at it, please show me your
books on fine dining in the Washington D.C. area.”. Who would
you rather be?
Back
in high school there was the ‘in-crowd’, often populated
by the jocks, and then there were the geeks, among other social
clicks. Today, many of those ‘geeks’ are wildly successful;
while some of those unfortunate others are asking us if we’d
like fries with our burgers.
So
it’s not so bad being a geek today, especially since so much
of our lives and economy are dominated by computers, software and
the Internet. It is wise to learn how to use the Internet as best
you can. By understanding how search engines and directories work,
like many geeks already do, you will find the information you’re
looking for more easily, quickly and with a lot less frustration.
Knowing how to pinpoint specific bits of information quickly will
give you an advantage over most other people who do not have these
skills. And this advantage can turn into big money by saving you
time in your day to day business. And learning about how to search
will help in your search engine optimization efforts if you run
your own website too.
So,
I invite you to pull up your pants to make high-waters, apply some
masking tape to the bridge of your eye glasses, and insert a pocket
protector in your front shirt pocket, and join me in learning how
to search like a geek.
The
more appropriate words you use the better.
Let’s say I want to find tickets to a new Broadway musical
show called Wicked next weekend in New York City. If you just type
the word ‘tickets’ into Google’s search box, you’ll
get 99.6 million results, which is very unwieldy. The first result
is ticketmaster.com. It took 4 clicks for me to get to their listing
of Wicked tickets, but they were out of inventory up to 6 weeks
from now, so it was a dead end since I want to go next weekend.
The
next result was Tickets.com, and when I searched for Wicked on their
site I found tickets available to Wicked in Toronto only. Another
dead end, I need tickets to the NYC production.
The
third result only sold airline and cruise tickets, not what I’m
looking for either. After clicking on another 4 websites, I still
hadn’t found what I was looking for. I was getting frustrated,
impatient and was just about ready to toss my PC out my window and
give up totally.
If
instead, I used a few more appropriate words in my search, my results
would have been much better. I tried typing the words ‘new
york city broadway wicked musical tickets’ in the Google search
box and came up with 230,000 results instead of 99 million, which
is slightly more manageable.
The
first result was www.musicalschwartz.com which offered ‘Ticket
Tips - Wicked on Broadway, Seating info’. So I clicked on
that and learned a number of things about purchasing Broadway tickets,
NYC travel tips and other information on Wicked the musical.
The
next two Google results were http://www.eagletickets.com
and http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com,
and they both offered tickets for the Broadway musical Wicked in
New York City on the weekend I wanted. So by carefully choosing
appropriate words to search with and using more than one or two
words, I found what I was looking for much more easily and quickly
than just searching using the word ‘tickets’.
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
the 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 the 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 the Web, I use more than one browser and more than
one search engine or directory. The difference between the 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 the other hand contain websites that have actually been reviewed
by a person. Therefore, the 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 the 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 the same time. Choose your search words
carefully, use more than two words and try the 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 the 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 the tickets example, let’s say I wanted to find
airline tickets, but each time I performed a search on tickets,
most of the results had to do with sports and theater tickets. I
could weed out all those irrelevant results by using the minus (-)
sign next to the 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 the search engine to find the exact phrase and in the
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 the search engine to look for sites that
have the 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
the ‘Find’ function.
Trust me; this one suggestion is worth the 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 the
page doesn’t immediately produce what you’re looking
for? In fact, the 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 the word or phrase you’re looking for
in the box and hit ‘Enter’ and it will immediately find
each and every instance of it on the Web page you’re on. This
will truly save you time if you remember to use it.
One
can get lost on the 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 the Net for your business, pinpointing appropriate and
relevant information quickly will put you ahead of the 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 the steps of a library.
Jason O'Connor is president of Oak
Web Works where you can get a free webmaster newsletter and
he also runs Broadway
Theater Show Tickets.
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