Still getting unsuccessful results in Web searches in Google? It can be quite irritating knowing that there are tons of information on the Web and yet, you get gibberish results. Over the years, it has become more and more likely to find needed information online. Well if you still can’t, sometimes it’s just a matter of searching the right way.

Searching the Web is a skill that involves certain techniques. Knowing these techniques can help you refine your search. Probably, the most basic of all is choosing and using effective keywords.

Keyword

A word or phrase that is relevant to a particular topic used in search engines to obtain related information.

Proper choice of keywords is essential to direct the engine to web pages that contain the most relevant information on the topic. I’ve observed that choosing good ones are still foreign to some web users especially new ones.

Here are a few tips on selecting proper keywords:

1. Don’t ask I’ve encountered some people who think that Google is some person that you could ask. Instead of putting “Who was the first man on the moon?” you can just put “first man moon.”
2. Decide on depth Are you searching for a general topic or something specific. “Cars” is a very broad topic and would lead you to millions of results. “Mazda ” will lead you to a car manufacturer. “2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution XIX” will lead you to a specific car model.
3. Search is not case sensitive
4. Mind your spelling Misspelled words maybe one of the top causes of fruitless searches. Good thing Google recommends proper or possible other spellings of your keyword.
5. Drop common words Google drops words like “a” and “where” by default since they have little to no effect on topic relevance. However, “the” is now included in the search since it occurs mostly in contexts such as titles.
6. String ideas together If you have some other knowledge on a particular topic adding in a keyword or two to narrow down your search to be more specific. Avoid something like this.

These tips on choosing keyword are just basic ones in search techniques. But knowing these can save you more time by knowing to be a bit more specific with your searches.

Next on this topic: Operators and word-per-word searches