Boolean Searches

Boolean searching is a way to do search queries and narrow down your results. This way, you are more likely to find what you are searching for. I really have a lot of luck using these methods, and, as far as your concerned, with the increase of digitized and searchable information, efficient and effective searching is and will be a major skill set for, umm, the foreseeable future.

So, here goes:

Quotation Marks - if you are looking for an exact phrase, then put it into quotation marks in the search field. This will limit the results to pages where those words appear in that specific order.

For example, do the following searches:
diamond mining in sierra leone (379,000 results)
"diamond mining in sierra leone" (4400 results)

AND - Another method of limiting your search results is to use the word AND in your search (must be in capital letters).

For example, do the following searches:
Buffalo abandoned houses (1,060,000 results...will bring up web pages with any of those terms)
Buffalo AND abandoned AND houses (614,00 results...will bring up web pages with all of those words)
Buffalo AND "abandoned houses" (9, 560 results...will bring up web pages with Buffalo and that particular phrase)

NOT - Another method of limiting your search results is to place a minus sign directly next to your search terms. This will make the search engine omit results with that word in it.

Let's say you are looking up school violence, but are only getting results related to Columbine high school.

Do the following search:
school violence (55,950,000 results)
school violence -Columbine (now you can focus on results that refer to other instances of school voilence.


For advanced users, try combinations of the above to get the exact results you're looking for.