How to search properly

Learning Intentions: Use strategies when searching

 Find relevant search results in less time

Do you usually begin by just searching for what you want or typing your question into Google? Sometimes that will work but as you want more complex information you will need strategies to help you.

How to search

Let's say you are looking for information on World War 2. If you type that into Google you get about 2.1 million results. That's not very helpful and while you could go straight to Wikipedia, as with any encyclopedia, that should be only a first stop not where you get the bulk of your information for your research.

What if we tried narrowing our search down? That's what search terms do

Search Terms

Search terms are what we put into a search engine to get results. If you know what to do you can get very specific information quickly.

For example:

If we want to know the causes of world war 2. If we use World War 2 causes as our search term it will give us better results.

There's also some fancy ways to really level up your game. Let's look at those now.

Get in the search engine game

Use * to specify the start or end of a word. E.g. To search for both German and Germany use German*

Use " " for the parts that must be together. E.g. To find pages that contain the exact phrase "World War 2"

Use - to filter things you don't want. E.g. To search for World War 2 but not the Call of Duty game "World War 2" -"Call of Duty"

Use and to make sure you get everything you want. E.g. "World War 2" and causes