Searching involves an understanding of basic logic or more precisely Boolean Logic. In the simplist case, you enter one or more key words and then tell the program to search. But if you want to surf the big waves, you have to fully understand what AND and OR mean. A AND B means both A and B must occur for an item to be flagged as having met your criteria. A OR B means that either A or B can occur for an item to be flagged. If you replace the capital letters with words that describe what you are interested in, you can combine a number of words with AND's and OR's between them to create very precise searches. In this way, you can get to exactly what you are interested in much more quickly. Most search engines have various options that can be set to refine the search (e.g., the type of resource searched, how detailed & how much output, etc.). Furthermore, most of the search engines have two ways of being used: a simple & an advanced mode (or interface). The latter usually permit the type of more advanced query described above. See the Help Section of each search engine for more details on its specific capabilities and syntax.
For more info still, see:
| Operator | Description | Meaning | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| + | plus sign | word required to appear | house +blue | without +, word is considered a request. |
| - | minus sign | word required not to appear | house -blue | |
| " | quotes | creates a multiword phrase | "blue house" | |
| & | AND | both words required | blue & house | Most sites assume this operator by default. |
| | | OR | either word required | house | home | |
| ! | NOT | used like - operator | house & ! blue | |
| ~ | NEAR | words must be within a few words of each other | green ~ house | |
| () | parenthesis | groups operators | house & (blue | red) | |
| * | wildcard | substitutes for any number of characters | house & gr* | In Lycos use $. |