The results you get from a search on the Web are only as good as your query. By using the following tips to write a query, you may get more targeted and useful results:

Quotation Marks

If you are looking for an exact phrase or group of words such as American Marketing Association for example, make sure to use quotation marks: "American Marketing Association." Otherwise, the engine will search every word separately.

AND

Use AND (uppercase) when you want to make sure your results contain two terms. If you use AND in your query, the search engine will retrieve only documents that contain both words.

OR

Search your subject with different synonyms to maximize your chances of getting results. Using OR (uppercase) will allow you to enter several synonyms for the search engine to look at as it will retrieve either of the words you typed.

+Sign

Some search engines will ignore and not search short words included in a query such as: in, of, a, out, with. Using the plus sign will ensure that all words are searched for. For example if your search is: Women in Government , make sure to type: +women +in +government.

-Sign

Use the minus sign if you want to make sure your results do not contain a certain word. For example, if you are looking for information on Marketing Strategy but do not want to get results from consulting companies, you can type: +Marketing +Strategy-Consulting

*Sign

You can use the star sign to truncate a word. For example, if you are looking for Marketing consultants or Marketing consulting companies , you can type: +marketing +consult* and the search engine will retrieve results with any word starting with consult.

Combination

You can use a combination of signs or words to do your search by putting terms in parenthesis. For example, you can type (American or U.S.) AND presidency.