Refining Your Search

If you do a search for a broad term like Germany, or cats, or knitting, you'll probably come up with too many results to easily go through. My search for information on Germany, for instance, came back with over 600 million results, or "hits"! When this is the case, you can change your search a bit to get information that is more relevant to you.

Here are a few tips for refining your searches:

• Include additional words that also describe what you're looking for. For instance, if I'm mainly interested in castles in Germany, I can refine my search by including a new phrase, and castles, in my search. The and connector lets the search engine know that you're looking for two more words that appear together. My new search, Germany and castles, comes up with fewer than 600 million hits, but there's still a lot to sift through. I can continue to refine my search by adding more and and additional search terms. Each additional term will help the search engine hone in on the specific information you're seeking.
• Putting phrases in quotation marks (for instance, "medieval castles" and "Germany") can also help refine your searches.
• Don't just limit yourself to Google. There are numerous search engines on the web, and each uses a slightly different search strategy. If you can't find what you're looking for in one search engine, try another, like Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com).