4.1. Why might I need advanced search techniques?
There are various reasons why you might need to do a more advanced search (ie.do more than just typing in a list of relevant words) ...
When you find too many items that aren't relevant
If you find thousands of items that don't provide relevant information, it is often a sign you need to be more precise in the terms you use and how you want the search engines to deal with those terms.
When you need to find an exact phrase
If you are searching for a site about someone called John James Smith, you do not want to find a page which, for example, mentions John Arnold, Nathanial James and Paul Smith. You only want pages which contain the exact phrase 'John James Smith'.When you want to specify the relationship between different search terms
Consider the question below:
Question: what will be found if you type in 'dog cat fleas' ... ?
Possible Answers ...
- only pages that mention all three animals - dogs, cats and fleas
- any pages that mention one or more of the animals
- pages that mention either cats or dogs, but definitely mention fleas
- pages that definitely mention dogs, and also mention either cats or fleas
Advanced searches let you distinguish between these possibilities.
When you want results that don't include certain words
If you are searching for information about Paris, Texas rather than Paris, France then you could specify that you do not want to see any pages that mention France.
Go to the next page for more information ...