Search Engines are great aren't they? Portals full of infinite knowledge that stretch far and wide across the cyber universe. Now they really would be useful if they returned the information you wanted.
If that's you then you've come to the right place, we can show you how. The reason your search isn't getting the results you want is your not using the Search Engines properly and that is largely their fought as they've not shown you how. A total injustice on their part but one we can now right.
When you search a phrase or multiple words say, for example, swedish lap dancers and the Pope (I've chosen these obscure keywords on purpose no pun or disrespect intended if your Catholic).
Lesson one:
A search engine will have a list of words, usually called a stop list, now this list is full of common words that have no real purpose or value when searching for a term that's used. Such words would include I, am, us, you, me and also 'and' and 'the' from our term. Obviously we're not looking for these terms for our search. The search engine takes out any words that are in their stoplist, so if they have no value don't use them, this includes commas and full stops.
So our search is now swedish lap dancers Pope. With some Search Engines you can search using capitals most however don't bother and will give you a full list with and without.
Lesson Two:
Plural can be important. If we don't use plural, eg lapdancer, we will get both the plural and the singular matches, as lapdancer is a better match the emphasis will be on the singular results ranking better than the plural. So if plural is important I'd search with a plural word. Say it's important in our search so we keep it.
Lesson Three:
So now what were asking the search engine to do is to find any websites with the word swedish in them, then the same for lap dancers and same again for Pope. Pull them together and put them all in, what will be, a huge list ranking them by most important. What we actually asked for is pretty vague.
What we'll find is a pretty irrelevant list. Anything to do with Sweden, so Tourism, language and sites about Swedish people and Sweden are going to be put into that list. Then everything to do with lapdancers, which I imagine is a fair few sites and then the Pope, same again though I imagine His Grace isn't quite as popular as the lapdancers.
If were searching for a term then we need to explain to the search engine that's what we want. To do that we put the term in double quotes ("), so now if we search '"swedish lap dancers Pope"' were telling the search engine to find the same term but with the three words one after the other. A relevant example is "web design". Now I imagine that will bring zero results so.
Remember the more words you use the more vague the search. The more words you put into double quotes the more exact the search and hence the less results that gives. What we need is a balance so onto the next lesson.
Lesson Four:
We can try searching by using two terms so now we try '"swedish lap danders"+"pope"'. We can take the double quotes out of Pope if we like on some engines so an alternative is '"swedish lap dancers"+pope', though remember if our second term is more than one word we would have to use the double quotes again. That gives us a better set of results, but we can further improve our search.
Lesson Five:
Say the Pope in our term had nothing to do with the Catholic pope we would then search '"swedish lap dancers"+"pope"-"catholic"' and anything found in the previous search to do with Catholic would then be taken out.
Voila - the perfect search! If a bit obscure but is useful when we realise that certain words can be different things in different contexts. One word may have a dozen or so different uses across the internet. It's then that what I've just show you becomes useful. For example if your looking for a professional web designer who does SEO from the UK you may try:
"web design"+"professional"+"SEO"+"search engine optimisation"+"UK"-"US"-"europe" a comprehensive search and one which will give you what your looking for. Whatever you do the worst thing you can do is to search for 'professional web designer who does SEO from the UK' which is probably what you will have done. I know I was once one of these people. Now you know better you can enjoy a much less stressful surfing experience.Happy Searching :-)