ACT I V I TY: ADVANCED WEB SEARCHES
Almost 60 percent of web searches include only one or two words. Although that
works for simple cases, an overly broad search can lead a musician shopping for
a new bass to some wildly off-topic bass fishing websites. With advanced search
techniques, people can filter out unwanted results.
Play around with the search strategies shown below to see how they influence
results. You could search anything from your favorite celebrity to cake recipes.
(Or put them together—searching “Beyoncé cake recipe” leads to a recipe for
Beyoncé’s daughter’s six-layer birthday cake.)
TECHNIQUE
EXAMPLE
RESULT
Use more keywords.
Search “electric
bass reviews”
instead of
“bass.”
Searching “bass”
produces 880 million
results. Searching
“electric bass reviews”
drops that to 109
million.
Put a minus sign in front of
unwanted words.
bass -fish
This returns sites that
include the word “bass”
but not the word “fish.”
Use quotations marks to get
an exact match for a string of
words.
“used electric
bass”
This returns only
websites that have the
words “used electric
bass” in that order.
Combine searches by putting
“OR” between them.
“used electric
bass” OR “used
electric guitar”
This returns websites
with information about
used electric guitars or
basses.
Add a * as a placeholder for
missing words.
“used * bass”
This returns websites
with terms such as,
“used upright bass” or
“used vintage bass.”
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THE WIDE WORLD OF CODING
