Sunday, February 17, 2008

Search for Beginners

I will tell you how to make a good search. Google will be my test bed.

Rule #1: Be specific
Our purpose is to find cheap accommodation in madrid. Open Google, type "hotel" and click Search. It gives too many results. We narrow our search term by "hotel madrid" which is still too much. "hotel madrid cheap" brings a better result set and we can start checking the result web sites.

Rule #2: Find what to search
You may not be using the right search phrase for getting what you need. Make test searches using related words. The higher number of results will give you a hint of the best phrase to use. For example you can use "madrid hotels", "hotels in madrid", "madrid accommodation" for determining the best keywords.

Rule #3: Filter what you don't want
Among all the results you may want to filter some words, phrases. The negation "-" operator is handy. A "madrid hotels -hostels" search will filter out hostels from the results.

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