Become A Power Searcher & Save Money

These tips will work with most search engines in their basic search option. They will also work within webpages that have their own search-such as EBAY, Amazon, etc. Practice using these and you will see the hoard of differences in your search results, plus, if you shop on line, as I do, you can find the best prices in the least amount of time.

  · Use the plus (+) and minus (-) signs in front of words to force their inclusion and/or exclusion in searches. You will especially find the minus (-) helpful when you want to omit very common word associations.
EXAMPLE: +meat -potatoes Your result would return all sites that have the word meat in them but do not have potatoes
(NO space between the sign and the keyword but is space between words)

· Use double quotation marks (" ") around phrases to ensure they are searched exactly as is, with the words side by side in the same order.
EXAMPLE: "Jesus with cowboy boots" Your results would show all 4 of these words just as typed
(Do NOT put quotation marks around a single word.)

· Put your most important keywords first in the string.
EXAMPLE: dog breed family pet choose

 · Type keywords and phrases in lower case to find both lower and upper case versions. Typing capital letters will usually return only an exact match.
EXAMPLE: president results in both president and President

 · Use truncation (or stemming) and wildcards (e.g., *) to look for variations in spelling and word form. The * takes the place of any possible letter combinations
EXAMPLE: librar* returns library, libraries, librarian, etc.
EXAMPLE: colo*r returns color (American spelling) and colour (British spelling)

 · Combine phrases with keywords, using the double quotes and the plus (+) and/or minus (-) signs.
EXAMPLE: +cowboys +"wild west" -football -dallas Here you would be searching for the primary keyword of cowboys, included with the 2 words (wild west) but any site with the terms football or Dallas will be excluded in your results.
(In this case, if you use a keyword with a +sign, you must put the +sign in front of the phrase as well. When searching for a phrase alone, the +sign is not necessary.)

If you use Google as I do, I have discovered a few neat tricks that I haven't found in other search engines. You can use your search bar as a quick calculator for simple math (+ - / *) In Google search if you type 1+1=  you will magically get your answer of 2.

 Ever come across a word on the Web that you don’t know? Instead of reaching for that bulky dictionary, just type "define" (without quotations)and whatever word you don't know. Google will come back with a bunch of definitions.

Number Range Search - This is the best little tool you'll ever see. I shop on line  so I use it a lot to enter criteria for prices. Here’s how it works: just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. Okay, so here’s one that you could try:
nintendo wii $100..$300

 You’re asking Google to find all the Nintendo Wii’s within the price range of $100 to $300 here. Now, you can use pretty much any kind of numerical combination; the trick is the two periods in between the two numbers.