Finding What You Need Online

Finding What You Need Online

You need to know how to access the information you need on-line as quickly and efficiently as possible. “Boolean” is one way to bolster your Internet wisdom. This silly word represents a very easy and powerful method of finding what you need on the Internet.

For example, merely adding quote marks (“…..”), or (+) and (-) signs in front of some of the words in a Google search will dramatically improve your search results, thereby providing access to many of the most valuable and pertinent on-line resources in seconds, and at no cost.

Please see the following link to learn easy tips for powerful searching: www.google.com/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html

After you retrieve good quality search results, you should select the most relevant links to “drill down” and then visually scan the results. If you read the domain/URL that comes up under each search result link before you click it, there will be hints on the relevance of the information and its source. Generally, longer URLs are more likely to link to “ad-centric,” useless content than shorter URLs, which often have good quality content.

Review many potential information sources from the results of your Boolean Internet search. As a result, you will have a better chance at finding those most pertinent. Drill down on the most promising links to read, print out, bookmark, keep notes on, and upon which to generally focus.

Furthermore, you should set up a free account at Furl.net, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, or similar social tagging and networking services to organize your bookmarks and share with others on the Internet as desired. Keep an eye out for Favorites.com and Bookmarks.com, too. Here is one example of a collection of social bookmarks from Furl: www.furl.net/member/microman

If you seek to simplify the URLs that you e-mail people or save, you can freely and easily create a short URL as a replacement at TinyURL.com or other places. The author of this guide uses TinyURL daily along with the aforementioned tools.

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