Follow these steps to find things easier:
Define what it is you are searching for.
Think of a few words which you know will be included in the page with your required information
Type these words or one of these words into the search engine search for dialogue box, and click search or press return. Using more than one word in a Boolean expression gets best results.
If your search produces too many results then choose to search through the results if the search engine offers that facility.
If you still have too many results, refine your search string. Your search string is all the words typed into the search for dialogue box, including the brackets and separate Boolean operators as described bellow.
Refining your search string should result in a different set of results from the search engine.
Example of a search string :((textbook + history) +( grade7 or grade8)) not (grade9 or grade10 or grade11 or grade12)
Note the nesting of brackets above. this is important to remeber that all brackets in search querries must be nested, or grouped correctly for a succesful search result.
The example above will return a list of all pages which contain both the words textbook and history provided they contain the words grade7 or grade8 and do not contain the words grade9, grade10, grade 11, or grade12.
This is an example of a bad search string, because the author might refer to the higher grades within the text and this will cause the book to be exclude from the search results. This shows how well thought out your search string should be to obtain best results.
You may type more than one word into the search for dialog box. A Boolean search is any search, which contains more than one word typed into the search for dialogue box. A search for dialog box will look something like the example below, and you are expected to type your choice of words into the space provided, including optional Boolean operators and any brackets as needed by you.
When a seasoned searcher initiates a search they may make up a complex Boolean expression to minimize the number of results displayed. Words typed into the search for dialogue box may be separated by or grouped together with brackets and operated on by the different Boolean operators to achieve the desired results. There are only three Boolean operators namely OR, AND as well as NOT.
OR
The or operator will include all pages which contain any one of the words, or all of them or any combination of the words typed into the search for dialogue box in the results. If you do not specify an operator between words then many search engines treat the whole group of words as an OR expression. This may result in an exceptionally high number of pages returned by the search engine, as the returned results will include all pages which contain any one of the words within the search for dialogue box.
AND or + (plus or addition sign)
The AND operator will include all pages which contain all of the words typed into the search for dialogue box with the AND operator between them, in the search results, and exclude those pages which may contain words which are excluded by the NOT operator if applicable. Most of the Bigger search engines such as google nowadays treat a Boolean search query as if the and operator was used between words entered into the search dialogue box.
NOT
The not operator will exclude all pages which contain the word or words or expressions to the right of the NOT operator as specified within the search for dialogue box from the search results. This is useful to separate those that waffle from those that get straight to the point. The NOT operator is also useful in eliminating specific subjects from a larger group so as to minimize the number of pages returned in your search results.
A complex Boolean expression produces fewer results to search through and this needs to be evaluated when using search engines.
