Beyond these, though, there are many other available tools, support for which can vary from search engine to search engine. That's just a handful of the Boolean operators available, and these are supported by pretty much all of the search engines. It churns out results where the search terms are between 10 and 25 words apart. Try something like 'computer NEAR support', which stands a far better chance of returning related results than a straight AND search.

What about, too, if you're looking for a pair of words in a given search, but need them to be reasonably close to each other in the returned pages? That's straightforward, too. So, for example, if you were doing a search for Windows, but wanted no mention of Vista, then you'd type 'Windows NOT Vista'. 'laptop OR notebook', for example, will throw up results containing either of those words.Ī further Boolean you can throw in is the NOT parameter, that will specifically remove results that contain a certain word. And' or and' won't do).Īn OR operator, meanwhile, can help if you're looking for results based on words that roughly equate to the same thing.

As long as both are present, though, a result will be returned (note that AND must be written entirely in upper case. But there are further parameters you can then build onto that.Īdding an AND parameter, 'like AND this', will again search for the pair of words, but not necessarily in that order. We'll assume first off that most people know that putting a search in quotes, for instance, 'like this', will search for that exact phrase. Thus, it make sense to kick off with Boolean parameters, that can easily help home in on a search target.

Let's start with some of the more common, and perhaps well known, of internet search functions. And often, it just takes a few extra key presses to get there Used properly, these extra tools can save time, and produce more accurate results. However, search boxes nonetheless contain a vast wealth of added power that many people never think about exploiting. Is there an action in computing right now that's taken for granted more than internet search? That's why the vast majority of users simply head for a Google box, type in their keywords and sit back, expecting the world to be delivered to their screen.įor the most part, that satisfies the majority of the people, the majority of the time.

Online search secrets