6 Ways to Find What You Want on the Internet Video

Welcome to Mind Tools' video learning series.

The sheer amount of information on the internet can, at times, be overwhelming. This can make finding the specific thing you want time-consuming and frustrating.

To pinpoint what you want, you need to make your searches as focused as possible. But how can you do this?

In this video, we'll look at six practical steps you can take to find what you need on the internet.

First, use a variety of search engines to see how the results compare.

Different search engines have different strengths and weaknesses. Google, for instance, usually provides the greatest variety of results, but Bing has more autocomplete results, which can help you narrow down your search.

Next, think about your keywords. These are the terms you type into the search engine.

The more specific your keywords are, the more likely you'll find what you want. For example, if you search for the phrase "exhibition stand," you'll get more focused results than if you typed "exhibition."

Keep your search terms simple. Take out unnecessary words like "and" and "to." And use the simplest forms of your keywords, avoiding plurals and verb forms ending in "-ing" or "-ed." 

For example, searching for "finance" will give you more relevant results than if you type in "financing" or "financed."

Narrow down your search by placing quotation marks around it. This will return results for only the word or phrase that you type in.

For example, if you search for the job title, Director of Human Resources, without quotation marks, your search will return results based on all the words in that phrase, including direct or directions. But by putting quotation marks around it, you'll get results for that phrase only.

Take out confusing or misdirecting terms from your searches by using the minus sign. 

For example, searching the term "Marketing -Digital" will return results about marketing, but exclude pages that use the word "digital." Remember to leave a space before the minus sign, but not after.

Finally, I'll leave you with a small word of warning…

The sites listed at the top of your search results are often paid advertisements or pages with optimized keywords. So, although they're at the top of the page, they might not have the best or most relevant content for you.

For this reason, it's always worth scrolling down or even going past page one of your results to find what you're looking for.

For more tips on how to get the most from your internet searches, read the article   that accompanies this video.