7 Web Search Tips for Online Business Owners

Copyright (c) 2007 Donna Gunter

Most online business owners are conducting fairly regular web searches. Typically the kind of information that they're seeking include local and national competitors, keyword research, and searches for resources for a particular topic. I recently tried to find a simple tutorial to help my clients conduct better Internet searches. Unfortunately, many of the tutorials that I found were created by academic libraries and provided too much detail and too many options for the simpler kinds of searches that most of us do.

Below are some simple tips to make your online search more effective. Since I do the majority of my searches on Google, some of these tips are Google-specific:

1. Carefully select your search terms. Instead of using broad or general terms that will return thousands of possible sites, try to use terms that are very specific to your topic. One way to narrow your terms is to review relevant sites you've already discovered and identify search terms from those sites.

2. Use quotation marks. If you're seeking a specific phrase, like "Internet marketing coach", enclose the term in quotation marks. Called a forced phrase search, this tells the search engine to return only entries that contain these words in this order. Sometimes searches without the quotes return similar entries, but you could also get an unrelated entry like, "...Internet that makes it easier on marketing for the athletic coach.."

3. Use Boolean operators. Boolean operators are words that allow you to combine search terms in most search engines. The most commonly used ones are:

AND -- AND tells the search engine to find both terms on the same site. For instance, entering "business AND ethics" would instruct the search engine to find web pages that contain both terms, "business" and "ethics." You can also use the '"+" sign for this, as in "business" + "ethics"

OR -- OR tells the search engine to find one term or the other. Entering "business OR ethics" would cause the search engine to look for web pages that contain either the word "business" or the word "ethics," but not necessarily both words. If you use this combination, be prepared for the search engine to return thousands of sites.

NOT -- NOT tells the search engine to find pages that contain the first word but not the second. This instruction is helpful when you know your search term is likely to appear with another term that does not interest you, like "golf NOT cart". You can also use the "-" sign for this, as in "golf -cart".

4. Site search. This helps you search for a phrase on a particular site. The command for this is site:URL "keyphrase". So, if you wanted to search the Houston Chronicle for mentions of Anna Nicole Smith, you would enter the following: site:chron.com "Anna Nicole Smith".

5. Search within a URL. Many times as you're thinking about buying a domain name, you want to find who may be using a particular term as a part of their domain name. Use the inURL code for this. For example, if you wanted to find all the URLs that contained the word "career" in Google, you would enter the following: inurl:career

6. Use a metasearch engine. Instead of trying to search various search engines separately, use a meta search engine. My favorite is Dogpile.com, which searches Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.

7. Give yourself a time limit. I've started searches and have had hours disappear in what seems to be minutes. Set up a timer to notify you 15 minutes into your search. You can then determine if you are wasting your time on a particular search strategy, spending too much time or a site, or assess if you need to refocus the search.

About.com provides a full Google Cheat Sheet with more detailed search queries on their site: http://websearch.about.com/library/cheatsheet/blgooglecheatsheet.htm

Web research doesn't have to be a time-consuming task. You can find exactly the information you seek by using a few simple shortcuts to get the best results.