191 Quick Search Tips

The following tips can be used across multiple search engines (like Google, Yahoo!, and so on). However, some exceptions are possible.

Keep your search simple. If you want to find articles written by professionals, use words that might be used by these professionals. E.g., instead of searching for “my tooth hurts,” you can use the word “toothache,” since it is more likely to be used by dentists.

To search for an exact phrase or sentence, use double quotation marks (“…”) E.g., “apple a day” would bring up sites where this exact phrase is met at least once either in the title or body.

Start the search phrase with the words that are most important. E.g., if you are looking for a number of people who got flu in 2009, you can use the following phrase – data flu 2009.

A search engine usually ignores articles, like a, an, or the, unless used within quotation marks. However, special signs, like $, will be kept. Searching for just special signs, like $ or #, would not bring any results.

Use signs plus (+) or minus (-) in front of words that you want to be included or excluded in your search. E.g., if you want to find articles on seasonal and bird flu symptoms, but not swine flu/H1N1, the following search can be used: +”flu symptom” +bird +avian +seasonal -H1N1 -swine.