Structure in the flow

(changelog for this post)

Searching the web is something I do dozens of times a day. Often, though, I’ll start searching and, not really aware of it, spend 5-10 minutes (or more) searching until I find the right combination of keywords to get to what I want. That a direct loss in the productivity department.

Here are a few tips I accumulated over the years to search more effectively. The list will grow as I discover new/better ones.

Search engine syntax

Fundamental, and best explained straight from the horse’s mouth. This best works by doing a quick brainstorming about relevant keywords that can be combined with operators (say synonyms combined with OR).

Terms likely to be in the page

Search for words likely to be found in the page, that characterize it, instead of terms in the title and main keywords (or in combination with them). That exploits the way search engines truly work, indexing the whole contents of pages.

The clearest example I can think of is when I’m searching for the full text of a classic book I know to be online somewhere, say some Shakespeare’s play. Instead of entering the title of the book and “full text” (ex: “Othello full text”), I’ll enter a few peculiar words I know to be in the book and not likely to be found together elsewhere, for example “thicklips kinsmen Brabantio grandsire” (ie. peculiar words found in the play Othello).

Of course in this case I need the text to be able to find it (say I rented the book at the library and want an electronic version). But in some cases I can predict the words I’ll find in a page, but not in the title. This happens all the time when I’m searching for programming questions. Instead of searching directly for the question that bugs me, I enter terms found in the “context” of the question.

Find the right, precise term first

A lot of my queries are for something I know must exist, I just don’t know how it’s called. For example, I long searched rather inefficiently for open source speed reading apps until I discovered they’re actually called “Rapid Visual Serial Presentation (RSVP)” apps.

Common to those situations, once you discover the right keyword, results abound by the dozen instead of dripping in accidently once in a while. Therefore having the right technical term is often the key and finding it should be a priority.

ADDED 2009.01.24: If you want to find the name for a concept/category and you have a few examples of elements of this concept/category, a good way to find it is by inputing these examples in Google. Ex: I wanted

Choose the right engine or directory

Google is the de facto engine to start queries, these days. But keep in mind specialized engines and directories exist. Say, for programming, there are open source code search engines (something I mentionned in an earlier post). For books, I refer to Amazon reviews, normally. For definitions, Dictionary.com. For encyclopedic content, Wikipedia. Etc. The key is in discovering sites with authority for a given topic or type of content.

Take advantage of your browser’s list of search engines (ex: you can easily add new search engines in Firefox menu) for those you use frequently.

CHANGELOG

• See “ADDED [DATE]” in the page