Most search engines support some kind of expressions to help you make your searches more effective. A good rule of thumb is to just try some of the following expressions with your favorite search engines. If they work, great. If not, well, perhaps you should use another search engine.

Before doing anything, be specific in your searches. Don't just search for "office 98". That might return a large number of hits. Instead, try searching for "access violation in outlook 98 when opening file". This sometimes works to find exactly what is needed (by the way, if you are enrolled in Microsoft TechNet, this search works great).

By default, most search engines perform an OR on the words in your list. Thus they search for word OR word OR word in documents. If you want to be sure to get just the documents that contain specific words, try adding a plus sign in front of the words. For example, for the search "Office 98 Tips" you could enter "+Office +98 +Tips" to get documents with just those words.

Sometimes you want to find documents without some words in them. In this case, use the minus sign. For example, to find sites with Pamela but not Tommy issue the command "+Pamela -Tommy". Or perhaps you want to find all of the Office 2000 documents but not Office 98. You could enter "+Office +2000 -98".

Okay, take a deep breath as it gets more interesting. The example "+Office +2000 -98" would return anything with "Office" and "2000" (but not "98") anywhere in the document. That may not return exactly what you want. To be more specific you could enter

"Office 2000" -98

This would return documents "Office" and "2000" right next to each other.

Remember that you can combine these symbols to search for exactly what you want. Experiment and find out what works - it will be fun.

Additional Information

• Be sure to submit your site to search engines Be sure to submit your web site to as many search engines as you can.
• Using search engines There are many hundreds of great search engines available on the net. Don't restrict yourself to just one - use whatever is appropriate for what you are doing.
• Where to find an answer Where do you find the answers you need? Here are some suggestions.