---

3. What is the best way to search?

First pick a search engine (see previous page for search engines) ... Google (http://www.google.com) is very comprehensive and a good place to start.

Once you have the search engine page, type in a word or words relating to your search. 

Remember the following important points:

• be as specific as possible ... a search just on 'America', for instance, will find thousands of pages containing the word 'America'

Example  

Click on each of the examples below to look at the results of searching using more specific terms with each search* 
*(nb. each one opens a new window; close the new window to return to this page)

America
America history
America history civil war
America history civil war slavery

• check more than the first few hits ... searches generally produce a long list of 'hits' (ie. pages that contain the terms you used to search); if you are having problems finding relevant results, it is often wise to quickly check the first twenty or thirty items.

HINT

Generally, 'hits' are displayed in groups of ten, with an option to click on the next group of ten at the bottom of the list of hits ... this is displayed on Google as shown below:

whereas on AlltheWeb as shown below:

• if there are no results, check your spelling of words

IMPORTANT The above method (simply typing in relevant words one after another) will often work. However, when a search comes up with too many results, or results that don't really relate to your enquiry, you may want to narrow things down by being more specific and use advanced searching techniques ... click on the next page to learn more about Advanced Searching.