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Fed up? In a Rut? Harness The Power of The Web In Your Career Search....
We have used 'career search' as a typical example for searching the web. The principles can be applied to most searches. Simply type your search terms (the word or phrase that best describe the information you want) into a search box and click search. The search engine will produce a results page; a list of web pages related to say for example career search, with the most relevant page appearing first, then the next and so on. Here are some tips on effective searching.
Selecting the right search term is the key to finding the information you need. Start with the obvious - if you're looking for information on career, try career. This will give 109,000,000 pages of information in 0.09 secs. Phenomenal - but you haven't got time to read all that. So how do we search deeper? You can drill down to trade, craft, profession etc. by searching for say career engineer. [11,400,000 in 0.39 secs]. This gets you part of the way there. If you then add marine and search for career engineer marine [661,000 in 0.43 secs] you are refining the career search. Choose your search terms carefully and try to be specific. Searching for marine job [9,550,000 in 0.49 secs] would not serve the marine engineer [2,080,000 in 0.34secs] too well, with more than 2 million pages still a bit much!! Commonly used words will not be returned so don't bother with 'and', 'for', 'a' etc. If a common word is essential to getting a satisfactory result you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it with a space in front of the + sign.
If you only want results that include an exact phrase put quotation marks round your search terms "career search". [1,143,000 in 0.33 secs] "career search engineer" [2 in 0.49 secs] "career search marine engineer" [no results]. Remove the " " and you get [472,000 in 0.50 secs] marine engineer job [643,000 in 0.45 secs], "marine engineer job" [211 in 0.80 secs], it's getting manageable. marine engineer jobs [431,000 in 0.27 secs], "marine engineer jobs" [409 in 0.38 secs] You then can search by other criteria specific to you i.e., location, region etc. You will then fully release the power of search. Incredible! A perhaps more direct example would be if you sought help with your resume. Resume [35,500,000 in 0.08 secs] how to do a resume [19,9000,000 in 0.29 secs]. how to do a resume and cover letter [232,000 in 0.27 secs]. how to do a resume and cover letter engineer [197,000 in 0.09 secs]. how to do a resume and cover letter aeronautical engineer [69,900 in 0.32secs] You can cut it any way you wish! Searches in general are not case specific. The brilliant Google isn't. In Google all letters no matter how you type them will be recognised as lower case. This helps you to search quickly. So be as specific as you can. Career Change was not specific as it was for illustration only. Use the search techniques so you can create flexibility and speed in your searches harnessing the power of the amazing Google and the other engines. Google is clever because it now includes 'stemming'. When appropriate it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. Any of the variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text, which accompanies each result. If your search term has more than one meaning, Band for example could refer to a strap round a barrel or the musical version. If you were a barrel maker you would search for band -music. Be sure as with the + sign to include a space before your minus sign. Band [77,700,000 in 0.10 secs] Band -music [32,200,000 in 0.31 secs] Band -music barrel [434,000 in 0.24 secs] Band barrel [631,000 in 0.44 secs] "band barrel" [470 in 0.40 secs] "band beer barrel" [83 in 0.32] Ironically this search has led to a whole lot of pages on a musical group called Beer Barrel. "wood beer barrel" [58 in 1.0 secs] Notice how the time for the search increases as you get deeper. Still only one second for the longest search in these examples. If after you've entered your search term you want to try to miss the search results pages and go to the most relevant site, on 'Google; press the 'I'm feeling lucky' button. Google will take you straight to the top site. Google also shows you how do advanced searches. Well worth exploring. If you're an infoholic happy Googling, Of course Google is not the only Search Engine, there are others. The Search Engine Guide is a great NEW pulication which gives the low down on getting the best from the search engines.
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