Since the advent of Search Engines well over a decade ago, many huge and incredible strides have been made on the back ends to improve the quality and usefulness of results. The weakness of search, in my opinion, has never really been on the back end. Rather, the biggest obstacle search engines face is on the front end - people simply do not know how to search. To compound that, even if you do know how to search (or if you bring up the "advanced search", it's still not very intuitive.
I like to consider myself a highly skilled searcher. It is part of what makes me good at what I do in consulting web businesses in how to improve search engine traffic and conversion rates. Even with all the skills I have at my disposal, it can often take me a fistful of search refinements and adjustments to find exactly what I'm looking for.
Today, I would like to take a few moments to do two things: 1) Ask the question: "What's being done to improve the front end part of search?" and 2) Help novice searchers with a few tricks that will help them get better results.
The Search for the Perfect Search
If you have ever looked at the "advanced search" features on Google (or any other search engine for that matter) there are some fairly useful and helpful tools there. With those tools, you can create a complex search term that will include specific things, exclude other things, focus on a specific area or language, and all sorts of things. The truth is, though, that most of these things have been around longer than the search engines. Sure the "-" used to exclude a word used to be "NOT" and the word "AND" used to be a parameter whereas nowadays it's assumed and no longer used - but in the end, the basics of a complex search term have been there since the days of search directories.
So, here we are... 16 years after JumpStation hit the scene, with gobs and gobs of improvement on the back end of search engines, but very little done on the front end. I'm not suggesting that I have ideas on what to do in respects to fixing the situation, but I am suggesting that it's certainly high time that someone spends a little time and resources on it. Google and all of the rest have been doing what they can on the back end to try to magically divine what we "mean" when we search. Doesn't it make sense that it would make the job a lot easier if they worked on coming up with new and innovative ways for us to simply tell them what we mean?
Maybe I'm missing something here? If I am - please let me know. Show me something that is being worked on to help improve the "face" of search so it can better communicate with the "brain" of search.
Even So - You Too Can Be An Effective Searcher!
Since there is nothing obvious on the horizon right now, we're going to be stuck with the same old same old for the forseeable future. Most people never really think about it, but finding information on the web isn't really the job of the search engine - it's the job of the searcher. Those of us who are good at finding what we want can sometimes forget that we are far ahead of many of our peers. I remember, because my friends know I'm good at it and I get a dozen or more requests each week from personal friends who e-mail or IM me to ask, "Can you help me find information on...?"
In speaking with one of these friends recently, I was surprised to find that she didn't know the simplest (and most often used) trick for creating a search. Thus, I decided to take the opportunity to provide some of these tricks that I use in my own searching. Hopefully it will help many people improve their skills and their ability to find what they are looking for.
Search Term Mechanics
- Use the "Advanced Search" Link: It doesn't matter what search engine you are using - they all have an "advanced search" link next to the search bar. This gives you a sort of visual interface to be able to create a complex search term. The trick here isn't in using the advanced search, but you should also take some time to look at the search term it creates for you. If you understand the "shorthand", you will find that after a while, you'll be able to create your own complex queries without needing to take the time to go to the advanced search page.
- Use Quotes for a Specific Phrase: Let's say that we are looking for the name of a song and all we know are a few words of it. If I put just got into town today into Google, we don't get very many useful answers in respects to finding out what song this is. But, if I put quotes around the term, I find my answer with ease: the results let me see that it is by Led Zeppelin, and it's on the "In Through The Out Door" album - and when I look on the page, we learn that the song is called "Hot Dog".
Bonus Tip #1: If you click the word "Cached" instead of the page title in the search results, it will hightlight the term you searched for on the page, making it easier to find what you are looking for on a page that has lots of text on it. - One or the Other Searches (OR): Okay, maybe we want to know some things about Jimmy Page and Robert Plant - but we want it all in one single search. If we use the "|" symbol (meaning) "OR", and create the search term "Jimmy Page" | "Robert Plant" (note the quotes from the above tip), we'll get a nice balanced set of results of pages that talk about Jimmy or Robert.
- Exclusionary Searches (NOT): Sometimes it's important to know what to not include in your search. By using the "-" before a word, we can tell the search engines to include only results that do not contain that word. Let's say that we are shopping for healthcare plans (note: There are paid results in this example that are useful... but we'll work with the organic ones for this...). When we search for that on Google, we get a whole bunch of stuff talking about all the healthcare debate going on in Washington right now. While this might be good to get informed about, it's not what we are looking for here - we actually want to find healthcare plans that we can purchase today. The idea here is that we need to think of a word that is going to appear in all or most of the Government Healthcare talk, but that isn't in the pages that will list and talk about various health care plans. What happens if we change our search to healthcare plans -obama (i.e. pages about healthcare plans that do not contain the word Obama on them)? Now we have a nice list of pages that are talking about healthcare plans.
Using these tricks along with being able to refine your search by homing in on something more specific, excluding things that shouldn't be on the page and using quotes around words that belong together on the page, you can make huge strides in actually getting the information we are looking for.
Some Other Cool Google Tricks
- Calculator: Planning for parties can be difficult. If you are having 10 people over to the house, how many liters of vodka are you going to need for everyone to be able to have 3 shots? Well, let's see if we can find out how many ounces are in a liter of vodka by asking Google. Right there, in bold print, it tells us that there are just over 33 shots in a liter. Uncle Jeff is is coming to the party, though - so we'd better get a second bottle anyway.
- Definitions: Since the dawn of time, man has tried to come up with a definition for love. Google does it with two words: define: love. Using "define:" followed by a word, google will do it's best to give you a good definition from a variety of sources.
- Ranges: This is a little known, but handy trick - especially if you are looking for time sensitive information. You can use ".." between numbers to get a range. For example, Led Zeppelin broke up when John Bonham died in 1980. Have they done anything in the 21st centeury? If we ask Google about "Led Zeppelin" 2000..2009 we get a list of things that have only this range of years associated with them.
- Movies and Music: Looking for Led Zeppelin CDs? Try searching for: music: "led zeppelin". Did they make any movies? Try movies: "led zeppelin".
- Life, The Universe and Everything: Yep, Google knows the answer.
The Future Of Search
I'm certain that in some basement, somewhere on this great planet Earth, someone is hard at work coming up with many clever ways to improve the front end of search. As content evolves beyond the realm of just being text and includes videos, music, scanned books, and more - searching using text is going to become even less and less efficient. Someone will simply have to come up with something that takes us outside the box and gets us looking at the search inteface in a new and exciting way.
None of this appears to be on the immediate horizon, though - so taking a little time to learn and make use of the tricks mentioned above (including using the "advanced search" links on your favorite search engine to see the variations of possibilities) will prove to be very beneficial to you. The search engines do their best to understand what we are looking for, but they can't read minds - yet. So you need to do what you can to be specific - both in what you are looking for and, in some cases, what you are not looking for. It can take some practice, but once you get it and you start coming up to answers to some of the great questions of life, you'll be happy.
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|2009-10-16 10:17:49 mrspokey - thanks for the info!you mean i shouldn't just repeatedly rephrase my question until i get something close to what i'm looking for?? thanks for the info--i'm happy to learn some tricks that'll save me time...and frustration!
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|2009-10-16 10:31:21 Stockbridge Truslow
Oh - rephrasing the question still helps too. But with these tricks you can go a lot further a lot more quickly and you won't find yourself on page 10 as often. ;)
Thanks for dropping in and I'm glad you liked the article! Hopefully it will come in handy!
