advanced searching guides & assistance

[digitalchaos]

Greetings community.

I have been attempting to become as proficient as possible at finding all types of information accessible via the Internet. Thus far I have located many tutorials including BrightPlanet, Pandia, UC Berkeley Library, University at Albany Library, Spire Project, & most of the resources @ dmoz under searching:Help and Tutorials. I have also learned much of the major engines' advanced syntax, and have collected numerous meta resources for various information types.

What else can I do to advance my ability to acquire relevant information online in a timely manner? If you know of any other advanced tutorials or methodology which could assist me, I would greatly appreciate being made aware of it.

Thank you for your time.

Please forgive any errors in my forum room selection for posting.

[detlev]

Hi digitalchaos,

There is a saying: garbage in, garbage out. What I bring this up for is that no tutorial will help you do better than your experience trying things out. Your choice of terms for the search is of absolute importance and is more important than learning advanced syntax. Experience will give you further insight into ways to search with advanced technique.

Choose terms and phrases that you think will be published in the documents you seek. Try to form phrases the way you expect to see them in the pages as you expect to find them. If you know what you are seeking, this is relatively easy. If you can't tell what it is that would be in the pages, then the advanced syntax can help refine or exapand your searching as needed.

The more experience you gain with searching, the faster you will be at returning SERPs that lead to valuable documents for you.

Hope this helps.

Best,
-detlev