# How do you use search engines?



## RamistThomist (Jun 15, 2008)

I realize this kind of like asking how do you talk.

For example, if I wanted to search for mp3s by Keith Mathison, but didn't want extraneous stuff in the search, what do I do?


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## blhowes (Jun 15, 2008)

Ivanhoe said:


> I realize this kind of like asking how do you talk.
> 
> For example, if I wanted to search for mp3s by Keith Mathison, but didn't want extraneous stuff in the search, what do I do?


Maybe something like +"Keith Mathison" +mp3


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## Semper Fidelis (Jun 15, 2008)

When I did a search I found this thread as the 4th most relevant result on Google: "Keith Mathison on mp3" - Google Search

Talk about extraneous results!


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## Semper Fidelis (Jun 15, 2008)

Were you looking for something specific from him? I can contact him for you if you're looking for a resource.


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## Davidius (Jun 15, 2008)

go here:

Boolean Searching on the Internet


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## Semper Fidelis (Jun 15, 2008)

Also here: Web Search Help Center


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## RamistThomist (Jun 16, 2008)

Semper Fidelis said:


> Were you looking for something specific from him? I can contact him for you if you're looking for a resource.



I just wanted to see if he had any good audio lectures. I do a lot of my learning/traveling by listening to mp3s. I have read most all of his books. If you contact him and he does have mp3s, or can direct me to where, that would be great.


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## Semper Fidelis (Jun 16, 2008)

Jacob,

Keith doesn't have any lectures online.


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## AV1611 (Jun 16, 2008)

Ivanhoe said:


> I realize this kind of like asking how do you talk.
> 
> For example, if I wanted to search for mp3s by Keith Mathison, but didn't want extraneous stuff in the search, what do I do?



The most simple search would be: "Keith Mathison" AND mp3 

Google will automatically put an AND in. You could also use the advanced search, and you could use a better search engine than Google. Google's logarithms will do strange things at times.


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## RamistThomist (Jun 16, 2008)

what's a better search engine?


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## Dwimble (Jun 16, 2008)

Google should work for you fine. Here's a quick rundown of the best way to search using Google (some of this has already been mentioned in this thread):

1. In the search box, put any phrases you want to find, in quotes. So, in this case you'd put ["Keith Mathison"]. Don't type the brackets...I just put them there to illustrate exactly what you type in the box. It's worth noting that you can include multiple phrases, so you could use: ["Keith Mathison" "R.C. Sproul"] if you wanted to get pages that have BOTH phrases on them.

2. Put any additional words related to what you want to find. For example: [mp3 audio recordings]. This will give you pages that contain ALL of those words. So, if a page had "mp3" but not "recordings" then the search results wouldn't list that page.

3. If you want to make some of the words in number 2 above optional instead of required, then put "OR" between each of them. So, using the example above, you'd instead use: [mp3 OR audio OR recordings]. That would result in pages that contain ANY of those words.

4. Put a minus sign (i.e. hyphen) before any words that you do NOT want to be included on the resulting pages. For example, if your search yielded a bunch of pages that contained recordings by some punk rocker who also happened to be named "Keith Mathison", then adding [-punk] to the search box would filter out those pages from the search.

Combining all of the above, you'd have a search box that looked something like this:
["Keith Mathison" "R.C. Sproul" mp3 recordings OR audio -punk]

I usually look at several links on the first page or two of results, and if they don't yield the result I'm looking for then I try to narrow down the search a bit. With a little practice you should get the hang of it.

NOTE: If you want, you could also use Google's Advanced Search page instead of the regular search box at google.com. If you use that then you don't need to use quotes, "OR", "-", or remember anything else like that. There are separate boxes for each thing, i.e. required words, phrases, optional words, words to omit, and other options.


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## RamistThomist (Jun 16, 2008)

Dwimble said:


> Google should work for you fine. Here's a quick rundown of the best way to search using Google (some of this has already been mentioned in this thread):
> 
> 1. In the search box, put any phrases you want to find, in quotes. So, in this case you'd put ["Keith Mathison"]. Don't type the brackets...I just put them there to illustrate exactly what you type in the box. It's worth noting that you can include multiple phrases, so you could use: ["Keith Mathison" "R.C. Sproul"] if you wanted to get pages that have BOTH phrases on them.
> 
> ...



Dude


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## Semper Fidelis (Jun 16, 2008)

Ivanhoe said:


> Dude



Where's my car?


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## AV1611 (Jun 17, 2008)

Ivanhoe said:


> what's a better search engine?



AlltheWeb.com
Clusty the clustering search engine

They are not better in terms of improvement but rather offer different functionality and complement one another.


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