July 05, 2009

HOW TO FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR WHILE SEARCHING ON GOOGLE OR BING

This Bing search [screenshot] showed up in my referer log (sans quotes):

"i just want to see ballet vids if u mind as i am not so interested in hollywood stuff"

And it made me sad, because someone came to Bad Example looking for information and didn't find it.

Judging from the spelling & grammar, this person is a teenager going to a public school, so it also makes me sad that kids are not being taught the important life skill of successfully using a search engine.

So, I'll try to fill the gap:

1) Write out a sentence describing what you're looking for - which my Bing-baby did just fine.

2) The fewer words you use, the better your search will work. So eliminate every word from your search except the nouns. A noun is word that names a person, a place, or a thing, as this video explains:


[YouTube direct link]

3) Look at your search results. If there's a particular word that keeps showing up, but it's not what you're looking for, add it to your search with a minus sign (-) in front of it.

So, with the above example, it would be:

1) i just want to see ballet vids if u mind as i am not so interested in hollywood stuff

2) ballet vids

3) ballet vids -hollywood

An addendum on part 2 - when you search, you should use the words that the people who would provide that content would use. In this case, people who make ballet vids are snooty and formal, so they would actually refer to them as "videos".

Hope this helps.

posted by Harvey on July 5, 2009 at 08:27 AM | Permalink | 0 Liars | TrackBack | Good Advice
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