Search engines like Google and Yahoo are wonderful, but they have their limitations. For example, doing a Google search for to be or not to be yields 2.56 billion pages. Obviously, these search engines have done a great job at tweaking their algorithms so that the pages most applicable are listed at the beginning of those results, but what should you do when Google or Yahoo just can't seem to get it right?
Obviously, with something like to be or not to be, you can be more specific to narrow your results a little. Adding that is the question brings the number of pages down to 571 million. Adding Hamlet after that phrase brings the total number of pages down to 9.66 million. Obviously, I have provided enough in my example for Google to discern what I am looking for and provide results from Shakespeare's Hamlet, but if I was searching for more obscure information, I would not have time to search through all 9.66 million pages to find the few that have the information I need.
One of the reasons for the multitude of results (besides the fact that the internet is just a large place) is that search engines will search for pages that match any word you write (excluding a few common words, like "the", "a", etc.) A search for to be or not to be Hamlet yields any page containing any of those words. Obviously, Google's software will rank pages containing all of these words higher than pages containing only one of them, but there is still the ability for pages that are not relevant to sneak in.
However, if you have a sequence of words, and you know the words will usually appear in that sequence, you can add quotation marks around them before you search. This will require that the exact phrase appear instead of just one of the words. You can also combine words inside quotes with words outside of the quotes. Now, a search for "to be or not to be" Hamlet yields only 592,000 results. Not only is this a mere six percent of the original number of pages, but it will also assist Google in providing the most relevant pages at the top.
Perhaps I was looking for the 1942 movie, To Be or Not To Be (I did not know this movie existed until I started doing searches on this phrase), and all I could find was information on Hamlet. (I realize that the to be or not to be search actually lists information on this movie as the first result.) Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have Advanced Search options, but they are not necessarily easy to find. These allow you to search with a variety of options to narrow your results even more.
Finally, if you know the website where your intended result is located, you can narrow your search to only that site. For example, if you are searching for information on a Windows problem, and you only want results from Microsoft's website, you can add site:microsoft.com to your search. This will only display search results with any terms you enter that appear on pages at Microsoft.com.
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