Performing Precise Searches
  • Boolean Logic AND
    Narrows your search to include documents that contain BOTH keywords.
For example:
dogs AND cats
  • Boolean Logic OR
    Broadens your search to include ANY of the keywords.

For example:
dogs OR cats

Use for words with similar meanings such as Education OR Teaching OR Learning.

Use for broadening your search to cover multiple angles or topics.

Use for common misspellings such as Klu Klux Klan OR Ku Klux Klan.
  • Boolean Logic NOT
    Narrows your search by excluding one meaning of a word.

For example:
dogs NOT cats
bats NOT baseball
cowboys NOT Dallas
Gold Rush NOT Alaska
  • Boolean Logic NESTING
    By combining Boolean words with parenthesis, you can perform multiple tasks at once.
For example:
Explorer AND (SUV OR automobile) AND tires is useful for synonyms.
  • Boolean Logic WILD CARD SEARCH (truncation)
    Use the asterisk * on the root of the word to search different word endings or plurals.

    • For example:
    educat* searches educator, education, educational, educated ...
    Some engines truncate automatically, so tribe may also retrieve tribes and tribal
    Other engines recognize that the plural tribes should also retrieve the variants tribe and tribal.

  • Boolean Logic PHRASE
    When you put quotes around a phrase, the search engine only will seek out pages that include that exact phrase.

For Example:

  1. "Declaration of Independence"
  2. "technology integration in k-12 classrooms"
  3. "the Bay of Pigs invasion"
  • Boolean Logic TITLES
    If you want a quick way to reduce the number of returns, type the word title with a colon in front of the search terms. This will only point you to pages that have those words in the title of the Web page.

For example:
title:America Independence Day Celebrations

  • Boolean Logic NATURAL LANGUAGE
    When it is hard for you to design your search precisely, some engines allow you to ask for information as if you were thinking aloud.

For example:
I want to know about the treaties that Native Americans made when they went to reservations. This search would be run as: treaties AND Native Americans AND reservations.

Ask Jeeves! and Ask Jeeves for Kids are two Natural Language search engine sites.

 
TROUBLE SPOTS
  • Dropping Common Words
    Some engines drop common words or one-letter words within phrases, so a search for the phrase:

vitamin A becomes equivalent to searching for vitamin
and a search for New Orleans becomes Orleans
  • Case Sensitivity
    Many search engines do not recognize capital letters.

For Example:
Newt and newt (the politician and the salamander) are treated identically
AIDS and aids (the disease and the verb) are treated identically

One search engine that searches common words and is case sensitive is go.com.

 

CTAP Online Copyright 2001
CDL/Butte County Office of Education
www.ctaponline.org