How to do a search on the Internet

Here are some general tips and advices on Internet related topics.

Research:
Not far from today about late eighties, at the times when there was no Internet, doing research was not easy. That's why most over 30 year olds do not know how to research and below 30 year olds take Internet research as granted. Today you can find almost any information on the Internet one way or the other. All you have to do is to look for it and look to find the right information.

Tips on Researching:
- Search all relevant words. For example lets say you are searching for some sort of statistics. Lets say "Paper Industry Statistics".
- Search for combinations like "Industry Paper Statistics".
- Search for abbreviations like "Stats" and "Stat". Search for misspellings "Statistiks" or "Statss".
- Search for synonyms and related keyphrases.
- Search in more than one search engine but not more than 5 different search engines. Because you will end up getting the same results. The reason is there are a few major search engine providers such as Google, Inktomi and Fast the rest of the search engines use these same search engine providers. When you see similarities in two different search engines get rid of one. I like Google the best but also search MSN and Lycos you might get good results with those as well.
- When you find information LOOK FOR DATES. Because there are many web sites with information pages from years ago. You might find an article mentioning "Paper Industry had a 10% decline in sales THIS YEAR". WHICH YEAR? Look for the DATE. If you don't find a date the information you found is most likely unusable for you.
- If you are looking for numbers and stats find at least 3 sources for the same numbers. When I say sources I don't mean web sites, I mean source of the actual information.
- If your search phrase has NON ENGLISH CHARACTERS and your keyboard does not support those characters go to a web site that has those characters and copy paste the single character into your search phrase and search again.


Posted: 4:06 p.m. EST September 17, 2005 by Kanato