How to Search the Internet

Thứ bảy - 27/04/2024 01:09
Learn how to search the web like a pro with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and moreA video of a purring tiger, a 2Pac song remixed with the Thomas the Tank Engine theme, a list of unusual college majors, the number of letters in the longest...
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A video of a purring tiger, a 2Pac song remixed with the Thomas the Tank Engine theme, a list of unusual college majors, the number of letters in the longest Spanish word—you can find just about anything on the internet if you know how to look for it! This wikiHow teaches you how to search the web using the most popular search engines, and how to improve your queries to get the most relevant results.

Part 1
Part 1 of 2:

Starting Your Web Search

  1. Step 1 Go to a search engine.
    A search engine is a website that collects and organizes information on the internet and makes it available for searching. Search engines use algorithms to display the most relevant search results based on trends, your location, and sometimes even your web activity. Many search engines have their own mobile apps that make searching easier on your phone or tablet. Check out some of the most popular search engines:
    • Google is the most popular search engine in the world.[1] It's so popular that the word "Googling" is often used in place of "searching the web." Google also has special image and video search features that make it easy to find all sorts of media.
    • Bing is Microsoft's answer to Google, and the second most popular search engine. Many of Google's functions, like image and video searching, are also available on Bing.
    • Yahoo used to be the largest search engine in the world. These days, it's powered by Bing and delivers similar results.
    • DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that doesn't collect or store your personal information. In fact, this search engine is so privacy-focused that it doesn't even look at your location or IP address.
    • Startpage.com is another search engine focused on privacy, but it uses Google's search engine in the background instead of its own program.[2] The benefit is that you'll get Google's excellent quality results without sacrificing your personal data.
    • Swisscows is another privacy-focused search engine, but it uses its own software that gives relevant results influence by semantics.[3]
    • Yandex is one of the most popular search engines in Russia, but the English version has gained traction in other countries, including the United States.
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Part 2
Part 2 of 2:

Refining Your Search Results

  1. Step 4 Use special search engine operators.
    Operators are special words and symbols you can include in your searches so they'll return more relevant results. Many operators work for all search engines, but some occasionally vary from the standard.[8]
    • If you're searching for a set of words, such as a song lyric or a sentence that appeared verbatim in a news article, put quotes (") around the query. "I woke up like this", "Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined".
    • If there's a certain word messing up your results (for example, if you're trying to find information on cardinals but are only seeing results for the St. Louis Cardinals), type a minus sign (-) in front of the word or phrase you want to omit. In this example, you might type cardinals -"St. Louis".
    • You can use the word "AND" (or the & symbol) to ensure that two different words or phrases both appear in the same result. For example, coronavirus AND "swine flu". You can also use "NOT" to make sure results don't include a certain word (e.g., coronavirus NOT "swine flu").[9] They can even be used together, as well as multiple times per query. Make sure "AND" and "NOT" are capitalized, as most search engines will ignore them otherwise.
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